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^Q RIGHT 



TO FIGHT 




Sherwood E.ddy 




Class _JDj113. 
Book lEIsT. 

CQEXRIGHT DEPOSIR 



THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 



THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

The Moral Grounds of War 



SHERWOOD EDDY 

Author of '*Wiih Our Soldiers in France," *' Suffering 
and the War" ''The Students of Asia," etc. 




ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York: 347 Madison Avenue 
1918 



*«,^ 



C/ 






Copyright, 1918, by 

The International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



SEP2i 1918 



(0)CU501890 



-> INTRODUCTION 

The writer's indebtedness to many authorities and 
sources is great, especially in Part II. He wishes to 
acknowledge his gratitude to several friends who have 
read parts of the manuscript : to Dean Charles R. Brown, 
of Yale, Professor H. H. Home, and Dr. William Adams 
Brown, who have read the manuscript of Part I on the 
moral problem of war, and who have made helpful sug- 
gestions : and to Professor J. A. James, of Northwestern 
University, and Professor Robert W. Rogers, of Drew 
Theological Seminary, who have read portions of the 
manuscript of Part II. 

The writer does not however hold any one, or any or- 
ganization, responsible for the opinions expressed in this 
book. He has been hard pressed and sorely perplexed 
by the problem of the ethics of war and many an hour 
of anxious thought has been given to it in the fields of 
France, within sound of the guns. 

New York, July 4, 1918. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction y 

I. The Moral Grounds of War ... .1 

II. Why America was Forced to Fight . . .31 

III. The Menace of Irresponsible Autocracy . 73 



PAET I 

THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 



PART I 
THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 

The war has compelled us not only to fight, but to 
think. It has challenged our former theories and habits 
of life. It confronts us with vast problems, ethical, 
social, and political. This book is the result of questions 
which forced themselves upon the writer's mind while in 
the war zone. 

The first question that arose was, Whatever may be 
America's right or Germany's wrong, is it ever right 
to fight ? How can the organized destruction and horrors 
of war be reconciled with Christian ethics ? On the one 
hand, we seem to be forced to the conclusion, on grounds 
of reason, of human experience, and of history, that the 
forcible protection of a state by war becomes at times a 
moral obligation. On the other hand, is this position 
contrary to the high principles of Christian morality? 
If so, how can this contradiction be reconciled? 

Every nation is confronted at times with the possibility 
of conflict with other nations, and every thinking man is 
faced with the ethical problem of war. He asks himself 
if war is ever justifiable, and if so under what condi- 
tions. Should Christians contemplate passively and 
without forcible resistance the destruction of the lives 
of their fellow-citizens or the invasion of their country, or 
are they permitted on a basis of Christian morality to 
engage in war? 

3 



4 THE EIGHT TO FIGHT 

There are three different attitudes to the problem of 
war. Militarism holds that war is a biological necessity 
and that it is a natural and inevitable way of settling 
international differences. Pacifism, when thorough- 
going and logical, holds that all war is wrong, that we 
are not justified in self-defence or in the protection of 
even our own family, community, or nation, if it in- 
volves the taking of human life. The Christian militant 
stands for peace, based upon a law of right, supported 
when necessary by the use of force. He maintains that 
although war is a dire evil, yet, because lawless vio- 
lence still exists, and men under the present conditions of 
society still require the restraints of law, upheld when 
necessary by force, the armed defence of its citizens be- 
comes at times the moral obligation of the State. 



Militarism usually rests upon a materialistic conception 
of the universe, either philosophical or practical. It 
maintains that the rule of nature is the struggle for 
existence, resulting in the survival of the fittest. 
Throughout the whole sweep of evolution, the progress 
of the biological kingdom is by warfare. Mankind also 
has risen by struggle, man with man, tribe with tribe, 
nation with nation. The individual is absolutely subject 
to the State, which is supreme and ultimate, for there are 
no higher laws to which it must conform, no higher in- 
terests with which it is concerned, no higher court to 
which it can appeal. As in the case of individuals, war 
is a biological necessity for the purification and progress 
of nations. Might determines right, and war must de- 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 5 

cide between nations which are the fittest to survive and 
rule; hence war is a nation's glory and duty. 

Treitschke in his ''Politics" fairly states the position 
which has been so consistently carried out by an aggres- 
sive militarism in this war. 

' ' The State is power, precisely in order to assert itself 
as against other equally independent powers. War and 
the administration of justice are the chief tasks of States. 
. . . The grandeur of history lies in the perpetual con- 
flict of nations, and it is simply foolish to desire the sup- 
pression of their rivalry. . . . Only that State which has 
power realizes its own idea, and this accounts for the un- 
deniably ridiculous element which we discern in the exist- 
ence of a small State. . . . Moreover, they are totally 
lacking in that capacity for justice which characterizes 
their greater neighbors. . . . Without war no State could 
be. War, therefore, will endure to the end of history. . . . 
Most undoubtedly war is the one remedy for an ailing 
nation. ... The individual should feel himself a mem- 
ber of his State, and as such have courage to take its 
errors upon him. There must be no question of subjects 
having the right to oppose a sovereignty which in their 
opinion is not moral. . . . 

''When Prussia broke the Treaty of Tilsit the civil 
law would have pronounced her wrong, but who would 
dare assert that she was guilty now ? . . . The slight de- 
gree of relative injustice which may possibly have at- 
tached to the German Revolution of 1866 has been bril- 
liantly justified by 1870. . . . Thus a breach of consti- 
tutional law can, like all other human transgression, be 
wiped out by Time. . . . The sword will be the only 



6 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

arbiter. We have learned to perceive the moral majesty 
of war. War, therefore, must be taken as part of the 
divinely appointed order. . . . We have already seen 
that war is both justifiable and moral, and that the ideal 
of perpetual peace is not only impossible but immoral as 
well."^ 

Brought up upon such a, doctrine of the state and of 
war as a biological necessity, steeped in the writings of 
Frederick the Great and the selfish convictions of auto- 
cratic Prussian Militarism, the Crown Prince of Ger- 
many could, according to the statement of Ambassador 
Gerard, ardently hope for war and say that when he 
came to the throne there could be war, ''just for the fun 
of it." 2 It may be ''fun" for him, but it is not to the 
maimed and crippled, the starving and dying men, nor to 
the seventeen million bereaved women who can have no 
home of their own at the end of this war. It may be fun 
for the kings, whose "chief industry is war," but not 
for bleeding humanity that has to suffer to satisfy 
their ambition. iWar may be a final, dire necessity in 
self-defense, but as organized destruction it is a bound- 
less evil, and for all who cause this offence to humanity it 
were better if a great miUstone were hanged about their 
necks, and they were cast into the depths of the sea. We 
can never accept war as normal, nor longer permit the 
militarist to force this barbarity upon civilization. If 
we must fight let it be so that we can say, "Never again. " 

iHeinrich von Treitschke, "Polities' (vol. 1), pages 19, 21, 34, 
65, 66, 96, 105; 131; (vol. 2) 396, 598, 699. 

2 See statement of Ambassador Grerard, "My Four Years in Ger- 
many," page 96. 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF. WAU 7 

For war is the world's last survival of barbarism. If we 
know what it really is we will take steps to prevent it in 
the future. War is retaliatory in its very nature and in 
the end men employ burning gas, flaming oil, and liquid 
fire to torture thousands, the bombing of defenseless 
towns and villages, the mutual endeavor to starve popu- 
lations by blockade, and the killing of helpless prisoners. 
To Treitschke or Bernhardi war may be heroic in the 
theorist's study at home, but it is ''sheer hell" to a man 
of fine sensibilities in the trenches. Here is a descrip- 
tion by a young English officer: ''It is hideously ex- 
asperating to hear people talking the glib commonplaces 
about the war and distributing cheap sympathy to its 
victims. Perhaps you are tempted to give them a pic- 
ture of a leprous earth, scattered with the swollen and 
blackening corpses of hundreds of young men. The ap- 
palling stench of rotting carrion, mingled with the sick- 
ening smell of exploded lyddite and ammonal. Mud like 
porridge, trenches like shallow and sloping cracks in the 
porridge — ^porridge that stinks in the sun. Swarms of 
files and bluebottles clustering on pits of offal. "Wounded 
men lying in the shell holes among decaying corpses, help- 
less under the scorching sun and bitter nights, under re- 
peated shelling. Men with bowels dropping out, lungs 
shot away, with blinded smashed faces, or limbs blown 
into space. Men screaming and gibbering, wounded men 
hanging in agony on the barbed wire, until a friendly 
spout of liquid fire shrivels them up like a fly in a candle. 
But these are only words, and probably only convey a 
fraction of their meaning to their hearers. They shud- 
der, and it is forgotten." 



8 THE EIGHT TO FIGHT 

To expose the fallacy of the militarist position one has 
only clearly to state it, and then see it applied in the 
world-wide misery and suffering occasioned by the 
present war, which is the reductio ad absurdum of 
militarism. Scientifically it is based on a half-truth. 
It takes the single factor of natural selection, depending 
on the ruthless struggle for existence, as though it cov- 
ered the whole of life; completely ignoring the higher 
law of altruism, cooperation, the mutual aid principle, 
or the struggle for the life of others. It is blind to all 
the loftier possibilities of life. It concentrates upon the 
instinct of selfishness, personal or natural, forgetting the 
higher laws of service and sacrifice. Centered in egotism 
and circumscribed by a false national circumference, it 
ignores the two chief factors in life — God and humanity. 
Today it has turned the world into a Prussian slaughter- 
house. 

II 

Strict pacifism maintains that all war is wrong, and 
that one is not justified in the armed defense of himself, 
his family, community, or nation, if it involves the taking 
of human life. We shall find that it, too, is founded on 
another half-truth. The pacifist position is usually based 
on religious grounds, upon a literal interpretation of 
certain aspects of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. 
One writer thus states the case : '* We believe that Jesus 
Christ faced the concrete question of war, and refused to 
adopt it or to sanction its use by His followers. His 
native land was a conquered province of the Koman 
Empire. The Eoman governors, tetrarchs, and procura- 
tors in Palestine during the days of Jesus were cruel 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 9 

iand merciless tjrrants. The STewisli people were eagerly- 
expecting a military Messiah, the son of David their war 
hero, who would deliver them from this bondage. It is 
preposterous to believe that Jesus did not take into 
account the one method that seemed adequate to His 
countrymen, namely the alternative of war. 

** Jesus did not, however, go to the opposite extreme 
and adopt an attitude of passive unconcern or docile sub- 
mission. He resisted wrong with all the might and 
power of His being, and is indeed the world's greatest 
resister. His entire life was spent in redemptive activ- 
ity, and He sanctions no method that violates the law of 
redeeming love. The cross is the culmination of His 
way of life ; the most revolutionary and dynamic way in 
all history. It is the paradox of the ages. The greatest 
progress of the human race has come by the way of the 
cross. National ideals and standards may come and go, 
but Jesus Christ and His principle of redeeming love 
and vicarious sacrifice remain the same, yesterday, today, 
and forever." 

It would be easy and natural here to make a hasty and 
sweeping generalization, as many have done, and to uni- 
versalize and legalize into a hard and fast rule of life 
a limited number of Christ 's sayings and actions, binding 
the Christian to an absolute pacifism in the fade of all 
evil and violence. But we do not so understand the 
spirit of Christ. We cannot imagine Him desiring the 
ruler of a State to stand passively by while his people 
are being murdered, violated, and butchered by savage 
barbarians, if he possessed the organized force to prevent 
the wanton destruction of life. 



10 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

We cannot forget that Jesus Christ was unique. He 
alone was the world's Saviour. Our question for Chris- 
tian conduct must be, not ''What would Jesus do?" but 
*'What would He have me do?" As the incarnation of 
love, Christ came to redeem the world; and the world 
could be saved only by a cross. His purpose was re- 
demptive. But redemption is not the only activity of 
love, in Christ, or in God, or among men. Jesus is 
portrayed in the gospels by Himself and His followers not 
only as Saviour but as Judge. When brought in contact 
with evil, love gives itself in sacrifice to overcome it and 
redeem the evil one. When, however, evil remains fi- 
nally impenitent before the sacrifice of good, omnipotent 
righteous love is called upon to judge the evil and finally, 
in the interest of the good of all, may be called upon to 
destroy it. 

The New Testament represents God as love, and as 
the long-suffering Father of His children, but the loving 
Father is both the Redeemer of the penitent and the 
Judge and Destroyer of the impenitent. The same is 
true of Christ himself. If we turn to the teaching of 
Christ, a few individualistic passages such as, "I tell 
you, you are not to resist an injury ; whoever strikes you 
on the right cheek turn the other to him as well," etc., 
would lead one to universalize a half truth of non-re- 
sistance to personal injury, just as the militarist has done 
with another half truth. But there are two hemispheres 
of the truth. In the context of the deepest teaching on 
love, a law that marks the sparrow's fall and numbers 
the very hairs of our head, He says of the Father 's atti- 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 11 

tude to the impenitent, ' ' Fear him who can destroy both 
soul and body in Gehenna. ' ' 

We are to forgive till seventy-times seven, but Christ 
says of the finally impenitent and unforgiving in the 
same context, * ' And in hot anger his master handed him 
over to the torturers, till he should pay him all the debt. 
My Father will do the same to you unless you each for- 
give your brother from the heart. " ^ In many parables 
He repeatedly represents both God and Himself as ren- 
dering judgment and destruction upon evil doers. He is 
also represented as coming again in final destruction of 
the wicked.* 

Whatever may be the interpretation of Christ's in- 
junction to His disciples to sell their cloaks and buy a 
sword, it is evident that His followers, including Peter 
as their leader, after three years of His companionship 
and teaching, carried swords, although they were for- 
bidden to use them in His behalf.^ 

Although redemption is love's central purpose, the 
judicial and punitive function, as well as the redemptive, 
are shared by God and Christ and by the magistrate in 
human society, who ''does not wield the power of the 
sword for nothing, he is God's servant for the infliction 
of divine vengeance upon evil-doers. ' ' ^ God is love : He 
seeks to redeem but He must also destroy. Christ is 



3 Matt. 10: 28; 18: 34, 35 — all passages are quoted from Mof- 
fatt's translation. 

4 See Matt. 18: 6, 17, 34; 21: 12; 24: 51; 25: 30, 41; 11 Thess. 
1 : 8, etc. 

5 Liike 22: 36, 49; John 18: 10, 11. 

6 Rom. 13: 4. 



12 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

Saviour, but He is also judge and wiU destroy. Society 
must seek first to redeem, but it must also protect and if 
needs be in the last resort destroy. 

Though war may be a temporary, it cannot be a per- 
manent, necessity. There is a better way and we must 
find it. We shall probably advance beyond national 
violence just as we did beyond personal violence. There 
was a time when every man was armed and fought for 
himself. Then communities armed themselves in mutual 
defence. As civilization progressed, the force of the 
community was represented in the armed policeman or 
soldier, while the community as a whole disarmed and 
devoted itself to peaceful vocations for the common weal. 
The individual never threw away his weapon, nor could 
he justly be asked to do so, until the armed force of the 
law made personal defence unnecessary. Nations, simi- 
larly, will not disarm at the Utopian promise that no 
danger exists, but when international law is backed by 
sufficient international force to restrain the offending 
lawless nation and protect the rest of humanity from 
its violence. Whatever may be the future development 
in international relations, *'a league to enforce peace" 
has been the actual method of advance in almost every 
primitive community, city, or nation that has entered 
the law and order of civilization. 

It is as ignorant as it is foolish to attempt to brand all 
conscientious objectors as unpatriotic cowards and 
** slackers." There is much to be said theoretically, es- 
pecially in time of peace, for the pacifist position. Its 
appeal lies in the frightful horror and organized destruc- 
tion of war, and the noble aim of peace, which all think- 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 13 

ing men desire. Nearly all of us agree that war is brutal, 
barbarous and out of date and that there are better ways 
of settling international differences which we must ear- 
nestly seek. 

It would seem to the writer that there are at least three 
errors in the position maintained by pacifists. The first 
is the undue emphasis placed upon mere physical life, to 
the exclusion of the deeper moral issues, and in a literal- 
ism and legalism which sees absolute finality in the letter 
of the law, *'Thou shalt not kill." This command for- 
bidding private murder is found in the Old Testament. 
The writer is not speaking here of the taking of human 
life by judicial procedure, or by the armed defence of a 
nation, for in the very next chapter the death penalty 
is enjoined six times.'' The command was given at a 
time when it was not possible for the hearers or readers 
to suppose it referred to warfare, for they were enjoined 
to war by the same authority which commanded, ' ' Thou 
shalt do no murder." There are many things more 
sacred than mere physical existence. If a Moslem horde 
falls upon Christian Europe to subject it to the sword, 
slavery and polygamy of Islam, it seems wrong to the 
pacifist to take the physical life of a single Moslem, even 
in defence of women and children, of humanity and a 
righteous cause, but not wrong to submit to the mon- 
strous moral crimes of polygamy and slavery which fol- 
low in its train. **Fear not them that kill the body," 
who only change the abode of the soul they cannot touch, 
but rather fear the moral blight which can enslave or 
kill both soul and body. ' ' 

7 Exodus 20: 13; 21: 12-29. 



14 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

The second error of some pacifists is due to a bold theo- 
retic idealism which would attain the desired end of 
peace without providing any adequate means of do^ng 
so. They maintain that if all men, or even all Christians, 
would refuse to fight, war would be impossible. They 
do not see that the organized use of force by the com- 
munity is necessitated as long as its indiscriminate use by 
lawless individuals or nations continues. If bandits in- 
vade a peaceful, civilized community to destroy it, paci- 
fists are not permitted to defend themselves; they can 
only fall back upon the good will of the bandits, which 
often does not exist, or upon a divine miracle. If 
Belgium had not resisted, they maintain that under 
certain conditions the miracle would have been wrought. 
Luxemburg made no resistance, but there was neither 
divine miracle nor human heroism nor sacrifice which 
helped to save the world. Miracle was confidently relied 
upon in the Children's Crusade against the Moslem arms, 
but it ended in pathetic failure and the surviving thou- 
sands were sold into slavery. The fact is God Himself 
uses means, employs destructive physical force, and takes 
physical life. He is frugal of miracle and persistent in 
the upholding of law. 

The theorist often sees great ideals, but he does not 
realize the patient, plodding means which must be used 
to attain them. To him things are absolutely right or 
absolutely wrong. But there are great principles which 
we all accept as being morally imperative as ultimate 
ideals, but which often can be progressively realized only 
under the protection of and in cooperation with civil 
governments, under conditions that are not yet ideal but 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 15 

painfully necessary and imperative, where the employ- 
ment of force in resistance to lawlessness and crime is 
for the time being as morally imperative as the ideals 
themselves. When love reigns in all hearts the need 
of force will have vanished, but in the meantime we can- 
not wait for the millennium, but must protect the help- 
less women and children and the whole life of the com- 
munity, whose defence is more sacred than the mere 
physical life of the evil-minded men who menace them. 
As Admiral Mahan said, ''The function of force is to 
give moral ideas time to work. ' ' ® 

A third error of pacifism is its over-emphasis on indi- 
vidualism and its inadequate social sense of obligation to 
the community. The pacifist daily enjoys the ordered 
life of the nation with its security of life and property, 
upheld by a police force which is backed by a standing 
army. Yet as a conscientious objector he cannot forcibly 
defend the nation whose armed protection he continues 
to enjoy. The pacifist usually fails to make any ade- 
quate provision for the State, or its defence and main- 
tenance. 

Pacifism seems to be a high and noble idealism which 



8 William Temple in "Mens Creatrix" says, "The old alterna- 
tives were, 'Work a rotten system at a moral loss to yourself/ 
and 'Leave the world and save your soul.' But now there is a 
third, always recognised in practice but not always in theory — 
'Go and make the world a better place, even if you have to dirty 
your hands in the process.' And if all moral obligations spring 
from our membership in society, it is clear that this is not only 
permissible but obligatory, and that a 'cloistered virtue' may be 
exquisite but cannot be moral, except in so far as it is attempted 
in order that its influence may benefit society as a whole," page 
193. 



16 THE EIGHT TO FIGHT 

would work under ideal conditions, if things were dif- 
ferent.. It would work in small homogeneous groups of 
like-minded people all constrained by the spirit of love, 
as in the primitive apostolic community, or in the noble 
company of high-minded men under "WiUiam Penn. It 
would also work in the millennium. But these ideal con- 
ditions are not fulfilled in the mixed communities of the 
real world today. It is here that we need help. The 
theoretical idealist withdraws just where we most need 
him, as did the monastics of the Middle Ages. Where 
has a single large community or city or nation during 
the last nineteen centuries been able successfully or con- 
tinuously to maintain law and order without the armed 
policeman or the use of armed force ? While the theorist 
waits till things are different, the rest of us must make 
them different by progressively realizing his ideal. 
There are other errors in the position of pacifism which 
will appear as we proceed. 

ni 
According to the third position, that of the Christian 
militant, the State, under existing conditions of society, 
should stand for peace, based upon a law of right, sup- 
ported when necessary by the use of force. The citizen 
who takes this position differs from the militarist in that 
he believes that war is a survival of a lower order of life. 
It should give place to arbitration and judicial procedure 
among nations, just as law and order have taken the 
place of violence and lawlessness among civilized indi- 
viduals. The man who takes this position differs also 
from the extreme pacifist, who holds that the taking of 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 17 

physical human life is always and everywhere wrong 
and that war is under all circumstances unjustifiable. 
With the pacifist he will earnestly and ardently seek 
peace ; but he maintains that the State should make pro- 
vision for the maintenance of law and order by a police 
force both municipal and national. In dire necessity he 
will regard war as right for the State, if the cause is just 
and if the only alternative to war is the surrender of 
principle, the loss of righteousness, or the infliction of 
greater wrong and evil than war would entail. Equally 
with the pacifist he takes his stand on moral and religious 
grounds, for he believes that to ignore or rule out religion 
from life is to lose its true center, its highest sanction, 
and its point of true perspective. He bases his position 
upon the following considerations : 

1. The Relation of Law and Love 

In the dispensation of God and the discipline of life 
there are two stages of development — law and love. 
The first represents the stage of authority, the second 
of freedom of spirit ; the former is the stage of outward 
constraint, the latter of inward restraint; the one is a 
period of preparation and the other of fulfilment. Law 
and love, however, are not contradictory, but comple- 
mentary. Both are eternal, even as righteousness and 
love are eternal in the very nature of God. Law, which 
in its highest form is the expression of righteousness, 
represents the demand of the moral order as reflected 
in the conscience of man. Love should be the true mo- 
tive of all just law and law is finally fulfilled only by 
love. But though love fulfils, it does not abrogate law. 



18 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

Eighteousness still remains the demand of the moral law. 
However much we may love, we cannot allow individuals 
or communities which are both lawless and loveless to 
dominate men with their evil wiU. Love is not a mere 
sentiment, nor does it do away with the eternal moral 
demand of law. It is not antinomian license, but it both 
fulfils and is morally bound to demand the fulfilment of 
all just law. 

For thousands of years man's development has pro- 
ceeded along two parallel lines, the one civil and the 
other religious — through a State and a Church. The 
State is the community organized for civil and secular 
ends; the Church is the community organized for relig- 
ious purposes. Through savagery, barbarism, and civil- 
ization, man's progress has been achieved by means of 
his civil and religious sanctions and experience. We 
send the child for six days to the secular or state school, 
and on the seventh day to the religious Sabbath or Sun- 
day school. The individual grows up with a dual obliga- 
tion, to man and to God, as a citizen to keep the law of 
the State, and as a member of a religious community to 
keep the law of God. 

2. The Belation of Jesus to the State 

Christ stated that He had come not to destroy the law, 
but to fulfil its moral demands by the inward motive of 
love. He did not attempt to legislate by hard and fast 
rules of conduct, as by the constraint of law in the past. 
He seeks by His teaching and example to infuse the love 
of God as the radiating center of all life, that all His 



THE MOEAL GROUNDS OF WAR 1? 

followers may be controlled by this motive of good will 
in tbe service of God and man. The Christian accepts 
righteous love as the central and controlling law of all 
his life. 

Jesus' teaching was chiefly personal, with social im- 
plications. He assumed or tacitly accepted large and 
important spheres of life with which He did not inter- 
fere — political, social, economic, legal, educational, etc. 
He simply founds a spiritual kingdom of love, which will 
in time permeate and transform all of the relationships 
of life. 

Jesus seems tacitly to accept the State as an established 
fact of constituted authority for human welfare. He 
indignantly resented the charge that His teaching im- 
plied civil disloyalty. He Himself kept the laws, both 
religious and civil. He commanded men to render their 
due both to Csesar and to God. *'The things that are 
Caesar's" would seem to imply not only formal taxes, but 
good citizenship and obedience, in so far as the claims 
of the State do not conflict with the claims of God. 

This dual obligation taught by Christ is expanded by 
the Apostle Paul in Romans 13 :l-7.® On the one hand 



9 Moffatt^s translation is as follows : "Every subject must obey 
the government-authorities, for no authority exists apart from 
God; the existing authorities have been constituted by God. 
Hence anyone who resists authority is opposing the divine order. 
. . . The magistrate is God's servant for your benefit. ... A 
magistrate does not wield the power of the sword for nothing, he 
is God's servant for the infliction of divine vengeance upon evil- 
doers. You must be obedient, therefore, not only to avoid the 
divine vengeance but as a matter of conscience, for the same 
reason as you pay taxes — since magistrates are God's oflSxjers, 



20 THE EIGHT TO FIGHT 

the Christian is under the personal religious obligation 
to love all men, to exact vengeance upon none, and to 
overcome evil with good. On the other hand, he is under 
the civil obligation of obeying the State unless its claims 
conflict with the claims of God. The State is upheld by 
the sword of justice, that is, by judicial force, for the 
protection of citizens, for the punishment of criminals 
and law-breakers, and for the preservation of civil law 
and order. There is no difference in principle between 
the judicial sword of the magistrate, the policeman's 
revolver, and the soldier's weapon of defence upon the 
nation's border. 

3. The Relation of the Christian to the State 

The State remained necessary even after the coming of 
Christ. The majority were not in the past, and are not 
in the present, governed by the higher motive of moral 
love, or avowedly subject to the rule of God. While the 
immediate rule of God in a theocracy may be the ideal, 
presumably the State will be necessary as long as there 
is an imperfect, developing, and mixed humanity, both 
good and bad, some subject to the inward restraint of 
love, living for the welfare of others, and some subject 
only to the outward and forcible constraint of law. 
Law will be necessary as long as there are lawbreakers ; 
and there will be lawbreakers as long as there are unre- 
generate, or uneducated or imperfect men or untrained 
youths remaining in a nation. No large civilized com- 

bent upon the maintenance of order and authority. Pay them 
all their respective dues, tribute to one, taxes to another, respect 
to this man, honour to that." — Rom. 13: 1-7. 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 21 

munity has ever been able permanently to dispense with 
the State, upheld by law and backed by force. 

The use of force is neither moral nor immoral in itself. 
It derives moral quality only from the end in view, and 
from the spirit and method attending its use. It is used 
constantly in the family, the community, and the na- 
tion. Destructive force is employed by God in His 
providence, and was necessary not only under the Old 
Testament law of the past, but will be also, according to 
the teaching of Christ, in the final consummation of judg- 
ment in the future. God 's motive and end is perfect love. 
By evil men for a selfish and destructive purpose the 
use of force is wrong ; but used by good men for a good 
purpose the same use of force may be right. 

It has always been held as a common moral judgment 
of humanity that it is a primal duty of the State to pro- 
tect the life and promote the welfare of its citizens. 
Human life, as the most priceless possession and trust of 
the State, must be safe-guarded and not wantonly sacri- 
ficed. It is difficult to conceive of any moral obligation 
of government whatever if the State is not responsible 
for guarding the lives of its citizens. And if the State 
must protect its citizens from criminals within its 
boundaries, it must also from criminal individuals or 
communities without. The alternative of such protec- 
tion under present conditions would be nihilism. 

Let us not ask ''What would Jesus have done in a 
remote age?" — a thing which none of us can prove or 
dogmatically assert, in seeking to force our own intui- 
tions concerning Him upon other men — ^but let us ask, 



22 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

**Wliat should a Christlike man do under present con- 
ditions?" For illustration, let us imagine a Christian 
President of the United States confronted by the prob- 
lem of evil as it is today. 

He is under a single moral standard, but he has a 
dual function and obligation. He is both an individual 
and a part of the social organism ; he is a member of the 
Church and an official of the State ; he is governed by the 
personal motive of love, but he is also an executive of 
law, which is the very foundation of the nation's life. 

If, as an individual Christian, he is confronted and 
opposed by an evil man, whether a friend or an enemy-j he 
will seek to overcome his evil with good and if necessary 
wiU sacrifice his own life to do so. If, likewise; he per- 
sonally is opposed by evil in the nation — let us say by 
the organized evil of intemperance or vice — he will be 
ready even to lay down his life as did Lincoln, Garfield, 
or McKinley at the hands of evil men. 

But now let us suppose three cases where the same 
Christian man is called upon to act as a citizen, an offi- 
cial, and an executive of civil law. If an evil man enters 
his home to murder his child or violate his wife, he is 
still ready to sacrifice his own individual life. But as 
the father and guardian of his home the motive of love 
for his family and even for the evil man will lead him, 
if moral suasion has failed, to prevent at any cost, cer- 
tainly at the cost of mere physical existence, whether his 
own or the criminars, the commission of so monstrous 
a crime. 

Or, to take a second instance, suppose this same Chris- 
tian President is confronted by an invasion by armed 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 23 

bandits across the Texas border, and they advance upon 
Washington threatening the overthrow of national law 
and order. Will the moral judgment of normal men hold 
that because he is a Christian, the President cannot de- 
fend, with all necessary force, the lives of the citizens 
whom he has sworn to protect ? If he defends the border 
a number of bandits and some of our own soldiers will 
be sacrificed ; but if he does not do so, thousands will be 
killed by the outlaws, as other thousands already have 
been killed in their own countries, where there is not 
sufficient organized force and good government to pro- 
tect human life. Is it right or wrong to defend the 
right, the helpless, the needy ? If a Christian cannot be 
President or consistently take part in the legislative, judi- 
cial, or executive functions of a State that aims to be 
Christian, then who can do so? Logically the pacifist 
must leave the State, its maintenance, leadership, and 
defense to non- Christians and wait for ideal conditions or 
the millennium. And how is that to come if no true 
Christian can consistently hold office? 

Lastly, let us imagine a Christian President confronted 
by the present world situation. More than three years 
have been spent in every effort that moral suasion, honest 
diplomacy, and earnest pleading and protest could devise. 
The might of organized evil lifts its head, until the land 
is strewn with its dead and the bed of the sea with its 
victims, until no foot of earth or ocean is not threatened 
by its menace. In the meantime, while a score of other 
nations are struggling for liberty and right against this 
world menace, our own nation has grown rich and fat 
and materially prosperous off the spoils of war. At last 



24 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

the parting of the ways is reached. Should the Christian 
leader of his nation let others die or sacrifice themselves 
and remain aloof from the world's life, in smooth con- 
tent apart, or should he, supported by the whole Christian 
manhood of his nation, rise to help save the world by all 
the resources of a free people, material, financial, intel- 
lectual, moral, and spiritual? 

Thus, under one standard of moral obligation and con- 
strained by the same motive of righteous love, an indi- 
vidual may be called upon to sacrifice his own life for 
others, where the same man, in other circumstances, as a 
Christian executive of civil law is called upon to main- 
tain the State, organized government, civil liberty, moral 
right, and Christian civilization by the whole righteous 
force of the nation. 

To the State as a provisional necessity for man's wel^ 
fare, under the providence of God, the Christian owes a 
loyal allegiance. Of course, his ultimate allegiance is to 
God. But since the Kingdom of God is both personal 
and social, and since it seeks to change not only the 
character of individuals but the relations and environ- 
ment of men, the Christian must seek to leaven the State 
by the principles of the Kingdom. In every situation he 
must ask, What does righteous love require for the ulti- 
mate highest good of all? 

4. The Use of Force in War 

War, or the united, forcible, armed action of the State, 
contemplates the inevitable destruction of life and prop- 
erty and is a dire evil. So is an epidemic, a cyclone, an 
earthquake, a fire, the punishment of a criminal, or a 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 25 

painful surgical operation ; but an evil is not necessarily 
a sin. Force must be used by the State to prevent its 
indiscriminate use by individuals. We conclude, there- 
fore, that as a last resort in the defense of righteousness, 
in upholding moral law, in the protection of human life 
and liberty, war is at times a moral obligation for the 
State. 

Let us, for illustration, take one or two concrete cases 
in which we believe war becomes a moral obligation. 
Stand in imagination with Charles Martel at Tours, fac- 
ing the Moslem hordes which were overrunning Europe. 
Nation after nation had already fallen before them. The 
peoples were offered the forcible acceptance of Islam or 
the sword. The strong died for their faith, the weak be- 
came Mohammedan. Nations thus convert;ed by the 
sword have remained under the shadow of Islam to this 
day. The Holy Land itself fell under its sway. Where 
the people offered no resistance, or met the invader by 
prayers and tears and appeals for mercy, no pity was 
shown. All Europe was threatened — its womanhood, its 
home life, its civilization, its faith. Was it not the duty 
of the citizens gathered at Tours, if they could find no 
other way of deliverance, to stand with Charles Martel 
in the defense of Europe by the sword ? As the Apostle 
Paul says, **A magistrate does not wield the power of 
the sword for nothing, he is God's servant for the in- 
fliction of divine vengeance upon evil doers. ' ' 

Or, supposing in modern times, Christian nations stood 
by while helpless Armenia was butchered by the Turks. 
If all the pleadings of moral suasion, and the repeated 
protests of your nation's ambassador, consuls, and mis- 



26 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

sionaries were of no avail, and if you were an official of a 
nation whicli possessed the force, in cooperation with 
other civilized nations, to prevent the atrocities and end 
a barbarous rule of many centuries, would it be your 
duty to establish good government, or let the butchery 
continue indefinitely? 

If the absolute pacifist is right in maintaining that all 
war is wrong, he must consistently apply this doctrine to 
life. If he is right in his extreme doctrine, the use by 
the State of every battleship or protective gun, of every 
soldier for national defense, and every member of a 
National Guard, is unjustifiable. If the absolute pacifist 
is right, every official and responsible member of the 
State which upholds government by use of force is par- 
ticipating in this wrong. 

The logical pacifist must consistently regret England's 
long struggle for freedom and the wresting the Magna 
Charta of her liberty from a tyrant, by the forcible de- 
mand of armed men. He cannot uphold the armed de- 
fense of England's shores against the Spanish Armada. 
Had he stood in India at the time of the mutiny, after 
the weU at Cawnpore had been filled with the bodies of 
English women and children dead and dying, he could 
not consistently have raised a hand for the forcible 
defense of the Empire against armed mutiny. After 
three thousand years of almost endless bloodshed, tribal 
wars, and invasions, India had at last achieved a united 
and just government, which, with all its faults, had es- 
tablished the Fax Britannica, with the full protection 
of life and property. If a defensive war is always and 
everywhere wrong, then John and Henry Lawrence, 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF WAR 27 

Henry Havelock, Colin Campbell, and all the martyrs of 
the Mutiny did wrong to resist it or to strive forcibly 
to restore good government. 

If he is an American, the consistent pacifist must feel 
that Washington and the men of Valley Forge did wrong 
in fighting for our liberty, and that the very independence 
and national existence of the United States are founded 
on the moral wrong of war. He must likewise believe 
that, however well-meaning he may have been, Abraham 
Lincoln did wrong to maintain the Union forcibly and 
free the slaves. If the pacifist is right, then McKinley 
and the nation behind him did wrong forcibly to free 
Cuba and the Philippines. Upon this theory our own 
nation and every other that has fought for liberty, jus- 
tice, or righteousness, for itself or for humanity, has been 
unchristian in so doing, and misguided in its instinctive 
admiration for the heroes and patriot soldiers of the past. 
Our praise should go to those who submitted to mon- 
strous wrong rather than to those who fought against 
it. However lofty the motives of the latter, the pacifist 
must oppose or condone their actions. But has the al- 
most universal moral judgment of mankind been so 
misguided? For ourselves we feel under no obligation 
to apologize for Washington, Lincoln, McKinley, or Wil- 
son in their fight for righteousness. We see no moral 
ground for repudiating the forcible founding of the na- 
tion, the preservation of the Union, the freeing of op- 
pressed Cuba and the Philippines, or the sacrifice of lives 
in the present war for the maintenance of the world's 
liberty, law, and civilization. 

Consistently, if he believes that the use of armed force 



28 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

is always wrong, the pacifist should disarm every po- 
liceman, and should offer no protection to the citizens 
of his country against mob violence. The absolute paci- 
fist could not consistently be president or hold any office 
under the government which employs armed force to 
protect its citizens. A corrupt man, a scheming politi- 
cian, or a non-Christian may hold such office, but his 
conscience will not permit the logical pacifist to do so. 

The practical and pragmatic test of a theory is, does 
it work? How does it operate when translated into the 
actual concrete in the modern world? The pacifist 
maintains that if we cannot conceive of Jesus going to 
war and shooting down His enemies, the whole question 
is settled for all time. But, on the other hand, neither 
can we imagine Him standing passively by while help- 
less women and children were violated or murdered. 
There are many lawful and necessary things which we 
cannot imagine Jesus doing so. He had three short years 
of public life to live and a death to die upon a cross. 
As we have seen, He was unique in his office as the 
world's Saviour. He had no call to marry or to be the 
father of a family, however right that might be for 
other men, no call to enter political life, hold office, re- 
form the state, devote Himself to a crusade against 
slavery, intemperance, vice, bad government, and a host 
of other evils of which the world was then full. The 
same principle which called Him to sacrifice His life 
at the hands of sinful men, would call His followers 
in other days to sacrifice their lives in striving even 
unto death against other evils. 

The law of righteous love should govern the State 



THE MORAL GROUNDS OF AVAR 29 

as well as the individual. The nation should seek to the 
uttermost the welfare of all, up to the point where it 
does not wrong those entrusted to it. The aim of the 
Christian individual or nation is righteousness, and the 
result of righteousness is peace. Peace, however, is not 
an absolute end in itself. There are higher things than 
peace and there may be worse things than war. The 
slimy, green pool is at peace, but the storm of the sea is 
better. A nation may be too effete and corrupt to de- 
fend itself, and may basely accept an immoral enslave- 
ment. It may be too intent on its greed of gain to care 
passionately for righteousness, for the welfare of 
humanity, or for the principles which should be placed 
above life itself. 

To sum up, then, force must be used up to the point 
where moral snasion and love become effectually opera- 
tive. Upon the plane of human reason, experience, and 
history, we are driven to the conclusion that under exist- 
ing conditions, war, as a last resort, is at times the moral 
obligation of the State. 

We believe that the sole and simple principle of right- 
eous love must govern the Christian at all times. The 
State, ordained of God as the organ of law, is under 
moral obligation to uphold law, to preserve order, and 
to protect the lives of its citizens by the still necessary 
use of force. The Church, ordained of God as the organ 
of love, exists primarily for redemptive activity. It does 
not exist to punish criminals, to direct sanitation, or to 
carry on war, however necessary these things may be. 
Its method is not by law but by love, not by force but 
by self-sacrifice, not by the thunders of Sinai, but by 



30 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

the cross of Calvary, which every Christian must bear. 
Our position, therefore, is not that of the militarist 
who knows no God above the State, nor the pacifist who 
sees no necessity for the forcible defense of his country, 
but that of militant love, ready to sacrifice itself for the 
nation and the world, in the dire necessity of war in the 
defence of righteousness, for the high end of the exten- 
sion of the Kingdom of God, for ultimate peace on earth 
and good will among men. 



PART II 

WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 



PART II 
WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 

We are facing today one of the great crises of his- 
tory. We are witnessing the amazing spectacle of one 
nation fighting the world; a single nation under one 
autocratic ruler, who is not responsible to Parliament or 
people, who wields almost absolute control over the vast 
Central Empires, numbering more than 175,000,000 
people in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and 
Turkey. One nation has made the whole world a place 
of war, of mourning, and of misery. We shall find that 
in the secret councils and hidden intrigues of the great 
autocracies of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs, this 
war was launched upon the world, forced upon suffer- 
ing humanity without the vote or voice, without the 
knowledge or consent, of the people of the Central 
Empires. 

All are familiar with the fact that the occasion of the 
war on the continent of Europe was found in the murder 
of the young Austrian Crown Prince, Francis Ferdinand. 
Its immediate cause lay in the revival of the old quarrel 
between Serbia and Austria, between the Slavs and the 
Teutons, between the expansion of Russia and the 
Balkan Slavs on the one hand, and that of Germany 
and Austria-Hungary on the other. 

While we were striving to maintain our neutrality, 

33 



34 THE EIGHT TO FIGHT 

the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Rep- 
resentatives had listed on its formal records twenty-one 
crimes and unfriendly acts committed within the United 
States, with the connivance of the German Government. 
Bridges were blown up, factories were set on fire, plots 
were started, bombs were placed on ships sailing from 
America, and the country was filled with spies. 

America's whole policy and interest since the days 
of Washington had pointed imperatively toward peace. 
She stood in ''splendid isolation,'' removed from the 
costly conflicts of Europe. The chief note in her foreign 
policy was the Monroe Doctrine, wherein she had pledged 
herself to defend the Western Hemisphere from foreign 
aggression, and in return to abstain from interfering in 
the political conflicts of Europe. Not until Prussian ag- 
gression became a world menace, threatening us and the 
Western Hemisphere, did we enter the conflict. 

A second point in our policy had been the persistent 
effort for the substitution of judicial for military set- 
tlement of disputes. We had striven at the Hague Con- 
ferences for binding arbitration, but largely through the 
opposition of the German Empire and its followers,- the 
effort to bring about treaties of compulsory arbitra- 
tion failed to pass. Thwarted in this general attempt, 
America had concluded dual arbitration treaties with 
thirty leading nations. The plan was cordially wel- 
comed by Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and other 
countries. Only Germany and Austria-Hungary, of the 
Great Powers, held coldly aloof. The German Foreign 
Minister frankly told Ambassador Gerard that such a 
treaty would forfeit Germany's advantage of a surprise 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 35 

attack and her readiness to strike the first blow in the 
case of war. 

After repeated warnings, President Wilson was at last 
forced to break off diplomatic relations, this step being 
taken a year and a half after the first unsatisfactory- 
exchange of notes on the "Lusitania" crime, and six 
months after the sinking of the ''Sussex." It followed 
repeated attacks on American lives and property. 

The Senate and House of Representatives, after fuU 
and free discussion, in response to the President's mes- 
sage, passed in the early hours of April 6th, 1917, the 
final vote before the House, and on that day the Presi- 
dent's signature was affixed. The total vote in the 
Senate and the House combined was 455 in favor of the 
war and 56 opposed. It was on Good Friday that 
Lincoln had sealed with his own great saorifice the 
victory of the Civil War; and on Good Friday again, 
under the shadow of a cross on grounds of conscience 
and of principle, the United States entered the dark 
valley of this war. 

If America was not stampeded or hurried into the war 
perforce, if her territory was not invaded nor im- 
mediately threatened, if materially she had nothing to 
gain and everything to lose by entering the war, if de- 
liberately she faced the certain loss of her sons and of 
her treasure, why then was America forced to fight f 
We maintain that it was for the following ten reasons: 
the growing menace of Prussian militarism; a premedi- 
tated war of aggressive world conquest fthe violation of 
Belgium against the most solemn treaty rights; the 
ruthless devastation of Poland ; the deliberate extermina- 



36 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

tion of the Armenians ; persistent German atrocities ; the 
sinking of the ''Lusitania" and more than 800 neutral 
vessels; the repeated violation of American rights and 
property; the crimes of the German spy system in our 
own country; and the ruthless policy of indiscriminate 
submarine warfare, forbidding to all nations the freedom 
of the seas. Let us briefly examine the evidence for each 
of these. 

1. The Growing Menace of Prussian Militarism 

As a formulated philosophy, as a theory of the State, 
and as a practical working system, Prussian militarism 
has grown until it has become at last the world's great- 
est menace, the destruction of international law and of 
world brotherhood. Slowly and painfully through the 
plodding centuries, the foremost nations of the world 
have struggled upward. From savagery to barbarism, 
from barbarism to the lingering dawn of civilization, 
the leaders of mankind had been slowly emancipated, at 
a cost of great sacrifice, from slavery and oppression, 
from tyranny and autocracy, and at last were trying the 
great experiment of democracy. Yet all in a moment, 
the world is challenged and would be robbed of its 
costly gain by this savage survival of medieval Prussian 
militarism. 

Peaceful democracy and world-conquering autocracy 
cannot dwell together in amity. The Moslem menace 
forced upon the world Islam or the sword; it claimed 
the allegiance ol the whole earth; it had either to be 
accepted in defeat or conquered in victory. Charles 
"the Hammer" challenged its claim and delivered 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 37 

Europe once and forever from its tyranny. Later 
Napoleon, through personal ambition, demanded a world 
empire to satisfy his vanity, and the world had to unite 
to reassert its freedom. A third and yet greater menace, 
not unlike that of the Moslem and of Napoleon, now 
threatens the world. 

A combination of something like the religious zeal of 
the Moslem and of the military ambition of Napoleon 
began to appear in the Kaiser. *'We Hohenzollerns,'' 
he said, ''take our crown from God alone, and to God 
alone are we responsible in the fulfilment of duty." 
On another occasion he said: ''Remember that the 
German people are the chosen of God. On me, as Ger- 
man Emperor, the spirit of God has descended. I am 
His weapon ; His sword, His Vicegerent. Woe to the 
disobedient. Death to cowards and unbelievers!" In 
addressing a body of new troops, the Kaiser said: 
"Recruits! Before the altar and the servant of God 
you have given me the oath of allegiance. You are too 
young to know the full meaning of what you have said, 
but your first care must be to obey implicitly all orders 
and directions. You have sworn fidelity to me, you are 
children of my guard, you are my soldiers. You have 
surrendered yourselves to me, tody and soul. Only one 
enemy can exist for you — ^my enemy. With the present 
Socialist machinations, it may happen that I shall order 
you to shoot down your own relatives, your hr others, or 
even your parents — ^which God forbid — and then you are 
hound in duty implicitly to ohey my orders." 

Prussian militarism had already made itself master of 
all Germany. It dominated the schools, the universi- 



38 THE BIGHT TO FIGHT 

ties, Church and State, the press, the people, and parlia- 
ment. Europe had been forced to spend more than 
forty billion dollars in self -protection, and the growing 
burden of the system was now draining the best part of 
the life of its young manhood in forced military service. 
Prussian militarism now menaces the world. It claims 
the State and makes it supreme. It challenges interna- 
tional law. It holds itself independent and absolute 
even before the moral law, which it alone can declare 
and interpret. It claims not only the State, but the 
right to make war with every other State which thwarts 
its interests or resists its might. 

Practically and concretely at this moment Prussian 
militarism claims the solid Central Empires and Turkey 
from Berlin almost to Bagdad. It claims Belgium, 
Northern Prance, Poland, parts of Russia and Italy, and 
all these only as a foothold for further conquests. It 
claims not only the land but the sea, and holds the 
right to sink any and all ships within the zone of its 
power. What is this State, this fetish, this idol which 
must be worshiped ? Who is behind this mask called the 
State? A HohenzoUern prince, a feudal Junker aris- 
tocracy, and a military staff. But one alone has power 
to make war and declare peace ; one alone has power to 
make war upon the world and he has made it. When 
this man says to the world, *'I am Jehovah's sword; woe 
and death to those who resist my will;" when he not 
only threatens but carries out his threat of world war, 
he becomes a world menace, and so long as he makes this 
claim he stands as anti-Christ, against God, against 
humanity. In the light of its theory and fact, of its 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 39 

proclaimed program and its actual accomplishment, can 
anyone deny that Prussian militarism menaced America 
and the world? This was our first reason for entering 
the war. 

2. A Premeditated War of Aggressive World Conquest 

In 1914 the time had come that was relatively most 
favorable to Germany for war. France had her military 
scandals and was disorganized with her three-year army 
law ; Russia was weakened by the Japanese war and by 
internal dissension and was not ready to present a united 
front to any foe without, as Germany knew through her 
efficient spy system ; England was threatened with civil 
war in Ireland; America was supposed to be too 
mercenary in her greed for gold to think of fighting, 
even under any indignity. 

On the other hand, Germany ^s long preparations were 
more complete than ever before. The Kiel Canal had 
just been improved and opened in June, 1914. The 
great Zeppelins were ready for attack on the civil popu- 
lations of other nations ; poison gas had been developed 
to such a point that it could be used with deadly effect 
on a surprised and panic-stricken foe; burning oil and 
flame throwers were promising inventions; the newly 
developed heavy guns could demolish even forts like 
Namur or Paris within a few days. Altogether, the 
army was the greatest fighting machine that the world 
had ever seen, and Germany stood a united nation, that 
could be mobilized almost instantly for war. 

Prussia alone was ready. Many of the French soldiers 
were in red trousers without war uniforms, and Paris 



40 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

lay almost undefended. Russia had neither adequate 
guns, equipment, nor munitions for her great supply 
of men. England was dreaming of peace, and it took 
her two full years to build the munition plants and equip 
her forces after her ''miserable little army'' had been 
almost wiped out in the first retreat from Mons. After 
three full years America was only beginning to prepare 
for war. If Germany is the martyr nation hemmed in 
by a jealous world which plotted her downfall, why was 
she alone ready, on a war footing, and the rest of the 
world unprepared for her swift attack? 

Not only did Prussia possess the forces; she also had 
incomparable plans. Anyone who will review the 
hundreds of books which have been written regarding 
her war plans will notice a growing consensus of opinion 
as to what those plans were. The first step was the 
mastery of the Ottoman Empire and the domination of 
the Near East; gradually Holland, Belgium, and Ger- 
man-speaking Switzerland were to be absorbed; the 
French, Dutch, and Belgian colonies should prove easy 
prey, and at the outbreak of the war Germany would 
not forfeit her hopes of securing the French colonies, 
even in bargaining for England's neutrality. The over- 
throw of Britain was the next main objective, but all 
of these were but steps in a well-defined plan for world 
dominion. Thus Professor Oswald says: ''Germany 
should crush England, break up Russia and reduce 
France to vassalage. ' ' ^ 



1 This is typical of hundreds of quotations that might Tbe cited. 
See "Conquest and Kultur; Aims of the Germans in Their Own 
Words," issued by the Committee on Public Information, Wash- 
ington. 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 41 

It should be clearly recognized that Germany's aims 
had not been confined to Europe, Africa, the French 
colonies, or the British dominions. She had already 
secured a foothold in China, and in numerous writings 
had resented the Monroe Doctrine, which excluded her 
from South America. From the Crown Prince down to 
the private soldier or civilian, men drank to *Hhe day" 
and awaited the hour when Germany's program could 
be carried out. The writer was in the heart of China 
on the day war was declared. A young German business 
man, called suddenly to the colors for the defence of 
German possessions, came to the American dentist before 
starting for Tsing Tao. "Vt^ith many others he was 
jubilant and said frankly that the day had come at 
last. ' ' We will crush France first, ' ' he said, ' ' and Paris 
will be ours within a few weeks. A large indemnity 
and a quick peace will leave us free to overcome Russia 
at our leisure. England will follow, across the channel, 
and then ! America will be next. ' ' 

3. The Yiolation of Belgium 

Germany's first act in the war was the violation of 
Belgium, against her own solemn treaty which had 
guaranteed its neutrality. Her action was important 
because it was typical of her whole course throughout 
the war. Her crime was three-fold: The deliberate 
violation of her own treaty in Belgium, torn up as a mere 
''scrap of paper,'' the pillage and devastation of the 
country by almost unbelievable atrocities, the system- 
atic impoverishment of Belgium in cold blood and the 
deportation of part of the civil population in practical 



42 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

slavery, attested by the American minister and countless 
neutral witnesses. 

Let us briefly examine these three charges. Belgium 
is important to us, not only for its own sake, but be- 
cause it was the first country to fall within the clutches 
of Prussian militarism in the present war. As we shall 
see, Belgium meant the invasion of international law, 
the invasion of human right, the first step toward the 
planned invasion of Britain and America. 

a. The neutrality and independence of Belgium were 
established by the Treaty of London in 1839. Bismarck 
made full use of this treaty in 1870, with the result 
that Germany and France entered into treaties with 
Great Britain to the effect that, if either belligerent vio- 
lated Belgian territory. Great Britain would cooperate 
with the other for the defense of it. By the Treaty of 
London the very existence of Belgium was contingent 
upon its perpetual neutrality. 

b. German atrocities in Belgium were &'o monstrous 
and almost unbelievable that the world was slow to ac- 
cept the evidence. Several things, however, make this 
evidence indisputable. First of all, the German War 
Book, or *'The Laws of War on Land,'' published by 
the German General Staff, shows what their theory of 
war deliberately contemplates, and what it teaches their 
troops to execute. It says: *'A war conducted with 
energy cannot be directed merely against the com- 
batants of the enemy States and the positions they oc- 
cupy, but it will, and must, in like manner seek to de- 
stroy the total intellectual and material resources of the 
latter. By steeping himself in military history, an of- 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 43 

ficer will be able to guard himself against excessive 
humanitarian notions. ' ' 

We find this Prussian theory of war exactly fulfilled 
by the placards of the German officers in their official 
notices to the devastated cities of Belgium, and in the 
records of Germany's own White Paper relating to the 
Belgian atrocities. The evidence goes to show that where 
German troops or a patrolling party were received at the 
entrance of a village by a volley from the retreating 
Belgian soldiers, or where stray shots were fired, the 
whole civil population was held responsible. The Ger- 
man claim that a ''People's War,'' or systematic attempt 
of the crushed and conquered civil population of Bel- 
gium, was widely organized within forty-eight hours 
after Germany's sudden invasion, is incredible. Civil- 
ians were accused of having fired, and often without in- 
quiry towns were given over to pillage and flames and 
a portion of the inhabitants were massacred. We do not 
need to take the evidence of the French, British, or even 
Belgians on this point. The proclamations of the Ger- 
man officers speak for themselves. 

Carrying out these proclamations, the German army 
proceeded to devastate Belgium. Cities were burned, 
property destroyed, hundreds of hostages were seized 
and shot, human beings were burned alive, women were 
outraged, children murdered, and enormous levies were 
placed upon cities. At Aerschot, the German Captain 
Karge gives evidence in the German White Book and 
describes how he butchered eighty-eight persons with- 
out any form of trial. At Andenne and in its immediate 
neighborhood many persons were massacred and about 



44 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

300 houses destroyed. At Dinant the soldiers of the 
108th Regiment broke into the church, seized fifty of 
the men, and shot them. Eighty-four more were 
murdered in the square and almost all the men of the 
Faubourge de leffe were executed. More than 700 in all 
were killed. In LoMvaine 176 persons, men and women, 
old and young, were shot or burned. The German 
Gruner's own figures show that eighty to one hundred 
were killed, * * amongst them it is possible that there were 
some ten or fifteen priests." 

The admissions of the German White Book show that 
they ordered groups of civilians to be executed without 
any form of inquiry and no mention is made of the 
punishment of a single German soldier inflamed by drink 
and lust. We do not need to peruse the painstaking 
inquiry of the commission under Lord Bryce nor its 
examination of some ninety diaries of German soldiers, 
where many of them contain references to their drunk- 
enness and pillage, we do not need to go beyond German 
sources to find her convicted, out of her own mouth, 
of one of the vilest national crimes in history. The 
testimony of the American Ambassador Brand Whitlock 
and of hundreds of neutral witnesses to this crime is un- 
impeachable. 

c. The atrocities of Germany were not confined to the 
fevered and frenzied first days, when the army of oc- 
cupation was crazed by drink. Prussian military of- 
ficers settled down in cold blood to collect $10,000,000 a 
month from Belgium to pay for the army of occupation. 
Belgium was stripped of her machinery, robbed of her 
raw materials, deprived of the means of livelihood. The 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 45 

total value of materials, etc., of which Belgium was 
despoiled reaches more than one billion dollars. All the 
world had to feed Belgium, and 9,500,000 of the starving 
population were actually fed through the American 
Committee under Mr. Hoover and his able associates in 
Belgium and northern France. The men of the civil 
population were first forcibly employed in labor against 
their own country, often of a military nature. Numbers 
of them were seized and deported into Germany, and 
that in direct violation of the Second Hague Peace 
Conference and even of the German War Book. 

The German Staff had apparently decided to draw 
several hundred thousand men from Belgium. This 
meant that about one man in every four would be taken 
from the population. These men, forcibly deported into 
Germany, would free the German workmen for military 
service. There is evidence that up to January, 1917, 
more than 356,000 had been taken and a further number 
of 50,000 from Brussels alone had been deported. Many 
have died from their ill treatment, others have returned 
broken for life. In Limburg all the males from fifteen 
to fifty-five have been removed. Cardinal Mercier's 
burning protest is still ringing in the ears of humanity.^ 



2 Cardinal Mercier's protest against the deportation of Belgia/ns: 
"The military authorities are daily deporting thousands of in- 
offensive citizens in order to set them to forced labor. As early 
as October 19, we sent a protest to the Governor General. At 
that time the ordinances threatened only unemployed men. To- 
day all able-bodied men are carried off pell-mell, penned up in 
trucks and deported to unknown destinations, like slave gangs. 
The w^hole truth is that each deported workman means another 
soldier for the German Army. He will take the place of a Ger- 
man workman, who will be made a soldier. The situation which 



46 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

4. The Devastation of Poland 

In the appeal of tlie American Poles to the British 
Government, January 9, 1916, they say: ''The terrors 
of war, visited upon the innocent, peaceful population 
of Poland, have been augmented by famine, pestilence, 
and death. One-third of a generation, the youngest, has 
practically ceased to exist ; the remaining youth, old men, 
and women are now upon the threshold of actual extinc- 
tion by starvation, disease, and exposure.'' 

It is difficult to realize that the long oppressed, 
divided, and crushed kingdom of Poland was once 
stronger than Germany or Russia, and one of the lead- 
ing states of Europe, with a population numbering more 
than 20,000,000. Falling a prey to Frederick the Great, 
it was finally partitioned in 1795, between Germany, 
Austria, and Russia. 

The 3,500,000 Poles in Prussia have been subjected 
to severe persecution and to greater indignity than their 
fellow-countrymen in Russia. They have not had their 
own laws since 1815; their religious liberty has been 
restricted; and their own language has been forbidden 
in education, in the transaction of business, and usually 
even in public meetings, although the mass of the people 



we denounce to the civilized world may be smnmed up as follows : 
Four hundred thousand workmen are reduced to unemployment 
through no fault of their own. Now, suddenly, parties of sol- 
diers begin to enter by force these peaceful homes, tearing youth 
from parent, husband from wife, father from children. They bar 
with the bayonet the door through which wives and mothers wish 
to pass to say farewell to those departing. Thus thousands of 
Belgians are being reduced to slavery." — S. S. McCIure, "Obsta- 
cles to Peace," pp. 314-316. 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 47 

do not understand any other language. Prussia has been 
trying alternately by bribery and force to induce the 
Poles to sell their lands and to plant German colonists 
upon them. 

The devastation of Poland has not been impulsive or 
haphazard in the heat of sudden conquest, but scientifi- 
cally planned and organized with true Prussian ef- 
ficiency.^ 

Naturally the Poles have been driven into bitter 
hostility toward their Prussian oppressors. More inac- 
cessible and less known than the people of Belgium, their 
suffering has been far greater in the present war. The 
newly-conquered districts of Russian Poland have been 
sub j ected to Prussian rule by ^ ' organization. ' ' At Kalish 
the Prussian General summoned the mayor and members 
of the corporation and placed them in the street face 
downward, threatening them with revolvers at their 
heads. He subjected this city of 50,000 people to three 
days of bombardment. The Prussians then proceeded 
to wreck the machinery and destroy the shafts of the 
rich Polish mines. 



3 Thus in advance the Germans announce: "Let us bravely or- 
ganize great forced migrations of the inferior peoples. Posterity 
will be grateful to us. Coercion will be necessary. Such tasks 
are also war-tasks. Superiority of creative power is but a means." 
And again, "If we take, we must also Tceep. A foreign territory 
is not incorporated until the day when the rights of Germans are 
rooted in its soil. With all necessary prudence, but also with 
inflexible determination, a process of expropriation should be in- 
augurated, by which the Poles and the Alsatians and Lorrainers 
would be gradually transported to the interior of the Empire, 
while Germans would replace them on the frontiers." (F. Lange, 
*'Reines Deutschttmi." ) 



48 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

Here were a million people in enforced idleness, on the 
verge of starvation, shut in between the hostile lines, 
their roads blockaded, bridges destroyed, railroads cut, 
isolated from their own markets and sources of supplies. 
The available food stuffs of Poland were commandeered 
by the German Government and sent out of the country 
for the use of the German people. Although the people 
were starving, all transportation of food from one local- 
ity to another was forbidden. 

*'The Import Co., Ltd.," took charge of the principal 
food supply of Poland. This prosperous company, up- 
held by Prussian force, was soon able to declare a divi- 
dend of 140 per cent., while multitudes of the 12,000,000 
Poles were starving. The German ''War Potato Com- 
pany" requisitioned the potatoes of Poland. Prussia 
then seized the monopoly of coal and coke and began 
the extermination of Polish industry. The metal 
cylinders and auxiliary machinery of the textile industry 
were taken away; then stocks of raw materials of oil, 
lead, sulphur, wool, and cotton were transported. In 
the factories alone raw materials to the value of more 
than $25,000,000 were commandeered. These were sold 
at a low price to manufacturers in Germany. 

One hope remained for the starving Poles. They had 
their own powerful charity organizations under a Cen- 
tral Committee in Warsaw, with provincial committees 
for the relief of the nation. In order to drive the starv- 
ing Poles into Germany, exploit their man power, com- 
mandeer their labor, and release German laborers for the 
fighting force in the trenches, the Prussians now 
abolished the central and -provincial relief committees, 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 49 

directly causing the starvation and death of thousands. 
With one stroke of the Prussian sword, there were swept 
out of existence 200 citizens^ committees, 200 wholesale 
shops with stores for the poor and 300 primary schools. 
All public educational institutions and libraries were 
closed, their own police protection was removed, 100 
central food distributing bureaus for refugees, twenty 
hospitals, thirty dispensaries, 150 tea houses for the poor 
were abolished, and the committee for rebuilding de- 
stroyed villages was suppressed. 

This successful stroke caused the paralysis of the 
social life of Poland. Many of the priceless forests were 
next cut down. The starving population were now 
almost at the mercy of Prussia, and the whole nation was 
subjected to systematic temptation. On the one hand 
they offered high wages if the Poles would work in 
Germany, and on the other hand, people were forbidden 
to give them food if they tried to live or work in their 
own country. 

A classmate of the writer, who traveled throughout 
Poland, saw the notices published by General von 
Besseler which forbade the giving of food to any Pole 
who was able to work. Upon asking the general the 
purpose of this rule he was told that this policy would, 
by starvation, quickly free the province for German oc- 
cupation, forcing Polish labor into Germany and en- 
abling them to do in a few months what they had failed 
to do in many years in German Poland. In some 
districts traversed by this American he found that all 
the children under six years of age had perished of 
starvation. He observed so many little bones of hands 



50 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

and feet without the larger bones of the skeletons that 
he asked concerning them and was told by the Prussians 
that they had used the larger bones to make phosphates. 
He states that some three millions were on the verge 
of starvation under this successful Prussian organiza- 
tion. 

This is all the more sad because Germany has never 
been able successfully to rule any other people. In 
South Africa the Boers, after their recent defeat, were 
given their liberty by Britain so freely and generously 
that as soon as this war broke out, instead of seizing 
the opportunity to rebel, they fought for the British 
Empire and for the overthrow of the German colonies. 
But no people has ever enjoyed the Prussian yoke. 
In Poland, as we have seen, it has produced bitter hatred. 
Even the Danes in Schleswig-Holstein since 1866 have 
been so irritated by the Prussian officials, so galled by 
their restrictions that they have preserved their national 
feeling against Prussia. In Alsace-Lorraine, in spite of 
the affinity of language, during all the years since 1871 
Prussia has never been able to win the loyalty or love 
of the majority of the people, and does not even to this 
day allow the conquered provinces a vote in the 
Reichstag. 

With such a record of Prussian rule, and with the 
examples of Belgium and Poland before them, what 
freedom could there be for any conquered people under 
such a yoke? Are the Poles to pass forever under the 
crushing weight of Prussian militarism, or is Poland 
to stand emancipated, a free kingdom, where govern- 
ments rests upon the consent of the governed? 



:WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 51 

This ruthless devastation of Poland was the fourth 
reason why America was forced to fight. 

5. The Extermination of the Armenians 

Time and again during the last few centuries barba- 
rous atrocities have been perpetrated by the Turkish Gov- 
ernment upon the people under their rule, but these have 
been fitful and sporadic and each time less than 50,000 
lives have been sacrificed to the cruelty of an Abdul 
Hamid and his predecessors, among the Armenians and 
the oppressed Balkan States. 

But Turkey has now been *' organized" much more 
thoroughly under Prussian guidance, and her system 
has become more comprehensive. Instead of 50,000 lives 
lost, there have been more than ten times that number. 
The papers in Turkey have been full of German Kultur. 
Germany has been publishing colored maps showing the 
promised future of the Turkish Empire. Large portions 
of the earth have been divided between Germany and 
Turkey. According to these maps displayed in all Ger- 
man advertising centers in the Near East, the Turkish 
Empire is to include Asia Minor, Palestine, Persia, 
Egypt, much of Africa, and the islands of the ^gean. 
A Moslem number of Illustrirte Zeitung appeared in 
Turkey, with eighty-six pages of Mohammedan appeal, 
beginning with a front page illustration inciting the 
Moslems to the *'Holy War." German dominance over 
Turkey was so complete that Germany could have pre- 
vented the massacres of Armenians had it so desired. 

There seems to have been such a uniform course 
followed throughout the Turkish Empire that it points 



52 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

toward an unmistakable purpose from headquarters. 
The leading Armenians of each locality, the educated and 
influential men, were first seized, imprisoned, tortured, 
and then carried off to be killed. The women and 
children were rounded up, and driven from their homes 
into the desert to wander or perish, often without pro- 
visions. Of the 2,000,000 Armenians who dwelt in 
Turkey, it is estimated that about half have perished. 

America has always been deeply interested in the 
Turkish Empire. Its missionaries have been the chief 
educational factor in that country. Its present mission- 
ary investment in plant must exceed $8,000,000, while 
400 American educators and missionaries have given 
their lives for the uplift of the people within this em- 
pire. Largely for the sake of this great philanthropic 
work, we have refrained from declaring war upon 
Turkey, knowing that it would mean the further 
massacre of thousands. 

The missionaries report that in one place 1,215 
Armenians were driven together and brutally slain by 
the Turkish gendarmes and released convicts. One of 
these stated to a professor in the mission college that 
he had personally killed fifty men with an axe and had 
obtained $700 as his share of the loot. One missionary 
reports: * 'Women with little children in their arms, 
or in the last days of pregnancy, were driven along under 
the whip like cattle. Three different cases came under 
my knowledge where the woman was delivered on the 
road, and because her brutal driver hurried her along 
she died of hemorrhage. . . . These poor exiles were 
mostly women, children, and old men, and they were 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 53 

clubbed and beaten and lasted along as though they 
had been wild animals. The women and girls were daily 
criminally outraged both by their guards and the 
ruffians of every village through which they passed, as 
the former allowed the latter to enter the camp of the 
exiles, and even distributed the girls among the villagers 
for the night. . . . Many hundreds have died, from 
starvation and abuse along the roadside.^' 

Viscount Bryce in his carefully prepared report on 
*'The Treatment of the Armenians" produces the testi- 
mony gathered from some hundreds of witnesses, repre- 
senting eight or ten different nationalities. Let us note 
first the testimony of the devoted German missionaries 
who have been laboring for the uplift of the people. 
Four members of the German Mission's staff in Turkey 
wrote to the Imperial German Minister of Foreign Af- 
fairs at Berlin as follows: ''Out of 2,000 to 3,000 
peasant women from the Armenian plateau who were 
brought here in good health, only forty or fifty skeletons 
are left. The prettier ones are the victims of their 
gaolers' lust; the plain ones succumb to blows, hunger, 
and thirst. Every day more than a hundred corpses 
are carried out of Aleppo. All this happens under the 
eyes of high Turkish officials. The German scutcheon 
is in danger of being smirched for ever in the memory 
of the Near Eastern peoples. We know that the Ministry 
of Foreign Affairs has already, from other sources, re- 
ceived detailed descriptions of what is happening here. 
But no change has occurred in the system. ' ' 

The following is from an article appearing in the 
German Sonnenaufgang and in the Allgemeine Missions- 



54 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

Zeitschrift, November, 1915 : * ' Twelve hundred of the 
most prominent Armenians and other Christians were 
arrested, 674 of them were embarked on thirteen Tigris 
barges; the prisoners were stripped of all their money 
and then of their clothes; after that they were thrown 
into the river. Five or six priests were stripped naked 
one day, smeared with tar, and dragged through the 
streets. For a whole month corpses were observed float- 
ing down the River Euphrates, hideously mutilated. 
The prisons at Biredjik are filled regularly every day 
and emptied every night into the Euphrates." 

A German eye-witness says, ''In Moush there are 
25,000 Armenians; in the neighborhood there are 300 
villages, each containing about 500 houses. In all these 
not a single male Armenian is now to be seen, and hardly 
a woman. Every officer boasted of the number he had 
personally massacred. In Harpout and Mazre the 
people have had to endure terrible tortures. They have 
had their eye-brows plucked out, their breasts cut off, 
their nails torn off; their torturers hew off their feet or 
else hammer nails into them just as they do in shoeing 
horses. When they die, the soldiers cry, 'Now let your 
Christ help you.' '' 

The following is a memorandum forwarded by a 

foreign resident at H : "On the last of June, 3,000 

people, mostly women, girls and children, left H 

accompanied by seventy policemen. The policemen 
many times violated the women openly. Another convoy 
of exiles joined the party, 18,000 in all. The journey 
began, and on the way the pretty girls were carried off 
one by one, while the stragglers from the convoy were 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 55 

invariably killed. On the fortieth day the convoy came 
in sight of the Euphrates. Here they saw the bodies of 
more than 300 men floating in the river. Here the 
Kurds took from them everything they had, so that for 
five days the whole convoy marched completely naked 
under the scorching sun. For another five days they 
did not have a morsel of bread, nor even a drop of water. 
They were scorched to death by thirst. Hundreds upon 
hundreds fell dead on the way, their tongues were turned 
to charcoal, and when, at the end of five days, they 
reached a fountain, the whole convoy naturally rushed 
towards it. But here the policemen barred the way and 
forbade them to take a single drop of water. At an- 
other place where there were- wells, some women threw 
themselves into them, as there was no rope or pail to 
draw up the water. These women were drowned, the 
dead bodies still remaining there and stinking in the 
water, and yet the rest of the people drank from that 
well. On the sixtieth day, when they reached Yiran 
Shehr, only 300 exiles remained out of all the 18,000. 
On the sixty-fourth day they gathered together all the 
men and sick women and children and burned and killed 
them all. On the seventieth day, when they reached 
Aleppo, there were left 150 women and children out of 
the whole convoy of 18,000." 

To get the full force of the atrocities one should read 
the voluminous report of Viscount Bryce on ''The 
Treatment of Armenians.'' Such has been the system- 
atic and organized policy of the Turkish government, 
under German control. Germany could have prevented 
this if she would. Here, where Americans had for half 



56 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

a century spent millions of dollars and many lives for 
the uplift of an oppressed people, after the failure of 
all the protests and entreaties of our diplomacy, we are 
faced with the fifth reason why America was forced to 
fight — the extermination of the Armenians. 

6. The German Atrocities 

In atrocities, as in other departments of war, Ger- 
many does not work by impulse. Here we have the 
practical carrying out of her well-defined scientific 
theories. 

The German "War Book states that the army should 
^^seek to destroy the total intellectual and material re-. 
sources" ^ of. the enemy state. Prussia seems to have 
endeavored to execute this theory, scientifically and ex- 
haustively. 

In the present war, Germany has swept aside the con- 
ventions of centuries. Civilians have been slaughtered, 
priests have been murdered, innocent hostages in large 
numbers have been seized and shot in cold blood, more 
women have been outraged than in any previous war, 
aged men have been killed, and infants have been 



4 Clause witz, the noted German authority on the subject of war, 
says: "The laws of war are self-imposed restrictions, almost im- 
perceptible, and hardly worth mentioning. . . . War is an act of 
violence which in its application knows no hounds." He defined 
requisitions as "Seizing of everything which is to be found in the 
country. . . . Requisition should be enforced by the fear of re- 
sponsibility, punishment, and ill treatment, by which in such 
cases it presses like a general weight on the whole population. 
. . . This resort has no limits except the exhaustion, impoverish- 
ment, and devastation of the whole country." {''Vom Kriege" I. 
Kap. I. (2), V. Kap. 14 (3). 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 57 

murdered and mutilated. The proof of these statements 
rests upon the testimony of thousands of accredited wit- 
nesses, German, American, British, French, Belgian, and 
those of neutral nations. It seems to the writer that 
the evidence of the diaries of the German soldiers goes 
to show that Belgian civilians sometimes did fire upon 
their enemies, which is not surprising in the defence 
of their own homes. But in other cases, if one or two 
shots were fired in the vicinity of a village, whether by 
civilians or by the retreating French army, or by drunken 
German soldiers, the whole village was at once placed 
in peril. The Belgians were held guilty unless they 
could prove their innocence, as was the case in Armen- 
tiers, which the writer visited. Many were shot without 
being allowed the opportunity to clear themselves, as is 
shown by the diaries of German soldiers themselves. 

The writer visited Bailleul, which the German Hussars 
had occupied in October, 1914. No resistance whatever 
was offered by the inhabitants to the German troops, 
yet civilians were taken in groups, and after being forced 
to dig their own graves, were shot by firing parties in 
the presence of an officer. A young mother who was 
unable to make sufficient coffee to supply twenty-three 
German soldiers, had her baby seized by one of them 
and placed in scalding water. An old man nearby who 
attempted to protect two women in his house from out- 
rage was murdered. 

[While the Hussars occupied Bailleul for eight days 
the whole town was given over to licentious excesses. 
There were at least thirty cases of outraged girls. 
Daughters were outraged in the presence of their 



58 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

motliers, and mothers in the presence of their little 
children. In one case a young girl of nineteen was 
violated by one officer, while another held her mother 
by the throat and pointed a revolver at her, after which 
the officers exchanged roles. Any civilian who at- 
[tempted to protect his wife or daughter was killed. 

The finest chateaux and private dwellings where Ger- 
man officers were quartered were often left in a state 
of beastly pollution, the beds, the upholstery, and the 
floors being used as latrines. The hundreds of carefully 
attested cases of the mutilation of women and children 
have almost no parallel in history, apart from the Turks, 
and the Huns of old. 

Near Richebourg TAvoue, the British soldiers heard 
a woman's shrieks during the night behind the German 
lines ; when they advanced in the morning and drove the 
Germans out, a girl was found lying naked, staked out 
upon the ground in the form of a crucifix. 

The report of the British Committee on Alleged Ger- 
man Atrocities, under Lord Bryce, after examining many 
hundreds of witnesses and publishing the diaries of more 
than ninety German soldiers, concludes that in many 
parts of Belgium there was deliberate and systematic 
organized massacre of the civil population, that innocent 
civilians, men, women, and children were murdered, that 
large numbers of women were violated, that the wanton 
destruction of property was ordered and countenanced 
by officers, and that the usages of war were frequently 
broken with regard to the civil population (p. 60). 

From hundreds of similar witnesses from many parts 
of Belgium and Northern France, only a single typical 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 59 

testimony will be given by a British non-commissioned 
officer, during the retirement of the Germans after their 
defeat on the Marne on September 17th: *'We were 
searching a village for a patrol of Uhlans at 3 :30 p. m., 
a small village of about fifty houses, and we found them 
in a house. On the ground floor there were ten Uhlans 
who immediately put up their hands and we took them 
prisoners. I searched the house ; everything was in dis- 
order. On the floor in the corner near the fireplace I 
saw two women and two children, the ages of the former 
apparently about twenty-five or thirty. One was dead, 
the one I judged to be the elder. Her left arm had been 
cut off just below the elbow. The floor was covered 
with blood. * * * The younger woman was just alive 
but quite unconscious. Her right leg had been cut off 
above the knee. As she was on the point of death I 
could not summon assistance quickly enough even to 
stop the bleeding ; I was sure she was beyond assistance 
then. There were two little children, a boy about four 
or five, and a girl of about six or seven. The boy ^s left 
hand was cut off at the wrist, and the girUs right hand 
at the same place. They were both quite dead and ap- 
peared to have died of hemorrhage too.*' (Bryce Re- 
port, p. 156.) 

**The German troops in Dinant sel bul lo pillage and 
shoot. They drove the people into the streets and set 
fire to their houses. Those who tried to run away were 
shot down in their tracks. The congregation was taken 
from the church and fifty of them were shot. All the 
civilians who could be rounded up were driven into the 
big square and kept there until evening. About six 



60 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

o'clock the women were lined up on one side of the 
square and kept in line by soldiers. On the other side, 
the men were lined up along a wall in two rows, the 
first kneeling. Then under command of the officers 
two volleys were fired into them. The dead and wounded 
were left together until the Germans got around to bury- 
ing them. Those killed ranged in age from Felix Fivet, 
aged three weeks, to an old woman named Jadot, who 
was eighty."'' 

A perusal of the report of the French Commission 
of Inquiry, and of the report of the Belgian Commission 
reveals the following facts: 

**In Belgium alone it has been proved that up to the 
present more than 5,000 civilians have been assassinated. 
At Louvain, more than 100 victims; at Aerschot, over 
150; at Soumagne, 165; at Ethe, 197; at Andenne, over 
300; at Tamines, 400; at Dinant, upwards of 600, of 
whom seventy-one were women, thirty-four old men of 
over seventy, six children from five to nine years old, 
and eleven under five. In Belgium about one hundred 
of the clergy were massacred, thirty-seven being shot in 
the small parishes, while more than 150 disappeared alto- 
gether from large towns. Outrages upon women and 
young girls have been common to an unheard-of extent. 
Even nuns were not respected." 

The fact of the German atrocities, unbelievable as they 
seemed at first, but continued, cumulative, and attested 
in so many hundreds of cases by unimpeachable evidence, 
formed the sixth reason which made America feel that 
she was forced to fight. 

6N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 17, 18, Dec. 6, 1917. 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 61 

7. The Sinking of the '^Lusitania" 

The case of the "Lusitania" was important because, 
like that of Belgium, it was typical. It showed what 
Germany would do at sea, as Belgium had revealed her 
policy on land. On May 1, 1915, the Cunard passenger 
steamer '^Lusitania" sailed from New York with nearly 
2,000 passengers. The day before, the German Embassy 
had sent out a printed notice of warning against taking 
passage on ships entering the danger zone. Anonymous 
letters were also received by passengers, stating that 
the ^^Lusitania^' would be blown up. 

On May 7th, just off the coast of Ireland, the periscope 
of a submarine was sighted and two torpedoes followed 
in quick succession. Within a quarter of an hour the 
vessel was sunk and 1,100 passengers had perished, in- 
cluding over one hundred American citizens. The 
**Lusitania'' was a privately owned, unarmed passenger 
ship. Her sister ship, the ^'Mauretania," was in the 
employ of the British Admiralty. Photographs of her 
sister ship, the *'Mauretania," mounted with guns but 
with the name '^Lusitania" printed under it, were cir- 
culated by the Germans in countries as distant as India, 
and many devout Germans believe that they have seen 
with their own eyes evidences that the * ' Lusitania ' ' was 
jarmed. The American Government formally and of- 
ficially ascertained before the vessel sailed that she was 
unarmed, and this fact was clearly stated by President 
Wilson. The vessel was carrying a large quantity of 
munitions, but this was in no way illegal. The killing 
of neutral non-combatants and the sinking of a passenger 
ship without yearning is not in any way excused or 



62 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

palliated by the character of the cargo which she carries. 
President Wilson clearly pointed out through the Secre- 
tary of State that *'no warning that an unlawful and in- 
humane act will be committed can possibly be accepted 
as an excuse or palliation for that act.'' 

The *'Lusitania'' incident does not stand alone. Up 
to April, 1917, when America entered the war, Germany 
had already sunk more than 800 neutral vessels. In 
addition to ships of four South American countries, the 
number of neutral vessels sunk were as follows : Ameri- 
can 20, Spanish 35, Greek 60, Dutch 76, Swedish 101, 
Danish 114, Norwegian 436. Peaceful Norway alone 
officially stated that more than 5,000 of her sailors have 
already been lost during the war. Neutral nations have 
never so suffered in any previous war at the hands of a 
belligerent. 

Is this the freedom of the seas for which Germany 
has been contending ? In a single week, yes, in a single 
day, we have lost more lives, suffered more injustice and 
greater injury from Germany, than we have from Great 
Britain in the last three hundred years, since she deliv- 
ered civilization from the Spanish Armada and tried 
to maintain the freedom of the seas. British restrictions 
have sometimes been oppressive, but these could always 
be submitted to arbitration and peaceful settlement. 
Germany has shown during the last three years what 
freedom of the seas, what freedom of the land, what free- 
dom of the world, there would be under her domination. 

This sinking of the ^^Lusitania," followed by more 
than 849 neutral vessels, our own included, was the 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 63 

seventh reason which forced America, against her will, 
into the present conflict. 

8. The Violation of American Rights and Property 

The cases of German violation of American rights and 
property were so numerous and frequent as, time and 
again, to justify war. The Committee of Foreign Af- 
fairs, in the House of Representatives, as we have seen, 
had listed on its formal records, before the declaration 
of war, twenty-one crimes and unfriendly acts committed 
with the connivance of the German Government, within 
the boundaries of the United States. Attempts were 
made to blow up bridges, and plots were discovered to 
destroy factories. Five different conspiracies were re- 
vealed for the manufacture and placing of bombs on 
ships leaving American ports, in open defiance of our 
laws. Newspapers in this country were financed for the 
conduct of German propaganda among our people. 
German spies were equipped with forged American pass- 
ports and sent to work in foreign countries. A fraudu- 
lent passport office under the supervision of Captain von 
Papen of the German Embassy was discovered. Hindus 
in the United States were incited to stir up revolution 
in India, and were supplied with funds to carry out 
these projects, in spite of our neutrality laws. 

These plots culminated in the famous Zimmermann 
note of the German Foreign Minister, at the very time we 
were striving for a league of nations to ensure peace. 
A conspiracy was discovered to involve us in war with 
Mexico, offering her financial support to enable her to 



64 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

recover New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Zimmermann 
admitted the authenticity; of this note. The text is as 
follows : 

' 'Berlin, Jan. 19, 1917. 

*'0n the first of February we intend to begin sub- 
marine warfare unrestricted. In spite of this, it is our 
intention to endeavor to keep neutral the United States 
of America. 

*'If this attempt is not successful, we propose an al- 
liance on the following basis with Mexico: That we 
shall make war together and together make peace. We 
shall give general financial support, and it is under- 
stood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in 
New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The details are left to 
you for settlement. 

* ' You are instructed to inform the President of Mexico 
of the above, in the greatest confidence, as soon as it is 
certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the 
United States, an(J suggest that the President of Mexico, 
on his own initiative, should communicate with Japan 
suggesting adherence at once to this plan. At the same 
time, offer to mediate between Germany and Japan. 

*' Please call to the attention of the President of Mex- 
ico that the employment of ruthless submarine warfare 
now promises to compel England to make peace in a few 
months. 

*' Zimmermann." 

Immediately following these plots, Germany continued 
to commit overt acts, which seemed designed to insult 
us with every open indignity, and to drag us into the 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 65 

war against our will. Shortly after the Mexican plot, 
the ^'Laconia'' was sunk, two Americans being lost, 
among others. Several days later the ** Algonquin" was 
torpedoed and the fourteen Americans who were mem- 
bers of the crew had to spend twenty-six hours in open 
boats. A week later three more American ships were 
sunk. The ''City of Memphis," which was plainly 
marked with the American flag, and with letters that 
could be read three miles away, was sent to the bottom, 
as she was returning to New York without cargo, and 
three more Americans on board were killed. The 
'' Vigilancia" was torpedoed without warning and fifteen 
of the crew lost their lives. 

The memorandum prepared by the Department of 
State and published in the Record of the 65th Congress 
shows that before the declaration of war, seventeen 
American ships had been damaged or destroyed by Ger- 
man submarines, and thirty-three other ships had been 
sunk with the loss of American lives. 

For causes far less than these, we had twice gone 
to war against England. The United States has never 
stood from England one-tenth of the indignity heaped 
upon her by Germany. Let any fair-minded German 
ask himself whether his own nation, with its long con- 
tention for the freedom of the seas, would have allowed 
America or England or any other nation to destroy or 
damage seventeen of its ships, to cause loss of life to 
German subjects on thirty-three other vessels, and to 
sink more than 800 neutral ships before its eyes, without 
going to war. 

This was the eighth reason, cumulative and irresistible, 



66 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

which drove America into the war, and made her feel 
that she was forced to fight. 

9. The German Spy System 

This German spy system is the most efficient and re- 
markable in the world. It is carried out according to well« 
defined plans, clearly stated in the German War Book.^ 

This elaborate system of espionage has been developed 
from the days of Frederick the Great, who went to war 
* ' with one cook and one hundred spies. ' ' Bismarck later 
discovered the man who developed the system scientifi- 
cally, Stieber, *'the king of sleuth-hounds." Before 
the Franco-Prussian War this genius had filled France 
with an army of 30,000 spies. Stieber himself waited 
on the French Minister in the guise of a valet, and 
systematically went through his pockets and papers. 
His men had invaded Paris by '^cunning" long before 
the army arrived with '' violence." 



6 "The means of conducting war . . . may be summarized in 
tlie two ideas of Violence and Cunning, and judgment as to their 
applicability may be embodied in the following proposition: 
What is permissible includes every means of war without which 
the object of the war cannot be obtained" (p. 64). 

"Bribery of the enemy's subjects with the object of obtaining 
military advantages, acceptance of offers of treachery, reception 
of deserters, utilization of the discontented elements in the popu- 
lation, support of pretenders and the like, are permissible. In- 
deed, international law is in no way opposed to the exploitation 
of the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, rob- 
bery, and the like) to the prejudice of the enemy. . . . Consid- 
erations of chivalry, generosity, and honor may denounce in such 
cases a hasty and unsparing exploitation of such advantages as 
indecent and dishonorable, but law which is less touchy allows it. 
The ugly and inherent immoral aspects of such methods cannot 
affect the recognition of their lawfulness" (pp. 85, 86). 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 67 

Stieber 's system of forty-five years ago has been main- 
tained and expanded in modern times. In America be- 
fore the war broke out we were finally compelled in dis- 
gust to dismiss the Austrian Ambassador, Dr. Dumba, 
after finding his letters reporting his plans to bring 
about disturbances in the Bethlehem Steel Works, etc. 
Von Papen and von Igel supervised the making of in- 
cendiary bombs on the ''Friedrich der Grosse" in New 
York harbor, and placed them secretly on outgoing ships. 
Their papers are held by our Government with von 
Papen 's check for $150 made out to Konig in payment 
to a bomb-maker. Robert Fay's confession in court, and 
that of his partner, showed that they had received money 
from the German secret police for placing their bombs 
and diabolical machines in the coal bunkers, or affixing 
them to the rudder posts of various steamers leaving 
American ports. 

Our Government holds and published the telegram 
dated January 22, 1917, from von Bernstorff, asking his 
Government for authority to spend an additional $50,000 
**in order, as on former occasions, to influence Congress 
through the organization you know of.'' Dr. Dernburg 
was going up and down the country extending the 
propaganda. Captain Boy-Ed, von Rintelen, Tauscher, 
and others connected with the German Government were 
busy in their work of espionage and destruction. A 
check for $5,000 was discovered which Count von 
Bernstorff had sent to subsidize the editor of Fair Tlay, 
and also a letter which the editor of the Fatherland 
had sent to the German agent, Albert, arranging for a 
monthly payment of $1,750 to be delivered to him secretly 



68 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

through women whose names he abbreviated '*to prevent 
any possible enquiry." 

Finally, the German agents spent $600,000 in the at- 
tempt to start a revolution in Mexico and to embroil 
her in war with the United States. 

All of the above-mentioned are only a small fraction 
of the widespread work carried on by hundreds of the 
paid agents of the Prussian spy system. And what 
was being done in the United States was only a fair 
sample of the dragon's teeth they were sowing broad- 
cast throughout the world. We have evidence and con- 
clusive proof in our State Department of the work of 
German spies in Latin America and Japan. The people 
were incited to insurrection in Cuba, Haiti, and Santo 
Domingo, and throughout South America there was an 
effort to stir up antagonism and bitterness against the 
United States. Taken together, these operations of Ger- 
many were a direct assault upon the Monroe Doctrine. 

One German document, bearing the date of March 19, 
1913, is a sample of how they were working just before 
the war in other parts of the world: **We must stir 
up trouble in the north of Africa and in Russia. It is 
a means of keeping the forces of the enemy engaged. 
It is, therefore, absolutely necessary that we should open 
up relations, by means of well-chosen agents, with in- 
fluential people in Egypt, Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, 
in order to prepare the measures which would be neces- 
sary in the case of a European war." 

When the United States Government asked for the 
recall of the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador and the 
German military and naval attaches, their Governments 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 69 

offered no apology nor excuse, they issued no reprimand. 
Von Bernstorff was honored and decorated and other 
agents were rewarded for their successful intrigue. It 
became growingly clear to the United States that this 
part of a settled policy of ''cunning" and that this the- 
ory of the German War Book was now being definitely 
carried out in practice. 

When the evidence was all taken together, and added 
to the repeated violation of American rights and prop- 
erty, with the combined policy of intrigue and violence 
on sea and land, President Wilson finally went before 
Congress and asked that war be declared, saying : ' ' One 
of the things that has served to convince us that the 
Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our 
friend is that from the very outset of the present war 
it has filled our unsuspecting communities, and even our 
offices of government, with spies, and set criminal in- 
trigues everywhere afoot." 

It was the malicious cunning of this spy system that 
furnished the ninth reason why America was driven 
toward war. 

10. Germany's Indiscriminate Suhmarine Warfare 

While the American people were filled with horror at 
Germany's treatment of Belgium, Poland, and the people 
of Armenia, and at her method of land warfare, it was 
her submarine policy that brought about nearly all the 
trouble between the Government of the United States 
and Germany. 

At the beginning of the war, on December 24, 1914, 
Admiral von Tirpitz threw out hints in the press 



70 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

of Ms new submarine policy of wholesale destruc- 
tion and asked, **What will America think?'' This was 
before the English blockade was causing- the Germans 
any serious food problem. On February 4, 1915, the 
Germans proclaimed a war zone, within which any ship 
could be sunk unwarned. America, under this German 
*' freedom of the seas,'' was to be allowed to send to 
a port designated by Germany, one ship a week painted 
with the abject convict stripes of servility to the Ger- 
man policy of terror. 

President Wilson replied to the German Government 
(February 10, 1915) that it would be held *'to strict 
accountability" if American rights were violated and 
American ships sunk. On May 7th the *'Lusitania" 
was sunk. Probably no event in modem history did 
more to make public opinion. The whole civilized world 
was filled with horror, and literally hundreds of millions 
of the people of the globe were turned against Prussia's 
policy. All the world looked on at this diabolical scene, 
'*as the huge ship went under and the water became 
black with men and women struggling for their lives, 
with little children full of terror but who hardly realized 
the terrible fate before them." 

It is an interesting point of German psychology that 
while the whole world was filled with horror, Germany 
was jubilant. * * The sinking of the great British steamer 
is a success, the moral significance of which is still greater 
than the material success. "With joyful pride we con- 
template this latest deed of our navy and trust it will not 
be the last." 7 



7 Kolnische Zeitung, May 10, 1915. S. S. McClure says, "I 



WHY AMERICA WAS FORCED TO FIGHT 71 

President Wilson's three ''Lusitania" notes failed to 
obtain any satisfaction from Germany, but finally on 
August lOth, Count von Bernstorff gave an oral pledge 
for the German Government that they would not in 
the future sink liners without warning. Contrary to 
this pledge^ however, the *' Sussex" was sunk (March 24, 
1916), a passenger vessel with Americans on board. 
As war was threatened, Germany grudgingly gave her 
promise (May 4, 1916) that in the future they would not 
sink ships without warning. 

Finally, however, Germany tore up her last scrap of 
paper, and her last promise (January 31, 1917) and pro- 
claimed her new ** unrestricted submarine war." The 
German Chancellor stated to the Imperial Diet that the 
reason why this ruthless course had not been employed 
earlier was that the Government had not been ready 
to act. As soon as a sufficient number of submarines 
were prepared, the blow was launched and the last pledge 
broken. Under the mask of friendship and the cloak 
of false pretense, Germany had been preparing for 
months to break with America and the world's public 
opinion. In all, before America was driven to war, more 
than thirty ships had been sunk, involving the loss of 
American lives, and 226 American citizens, men, women, 
and children, had perished. 

Germany's piratical submarine policy was now com- 
pletely revealed. Enemy vessels and neutral vessels, 
freighters and liners, hospital ships and those carrying 

found no one in Germany wlio did not most heartily and com- 
pletely approve the sinking of the 'Lusitania.' " — "Obstacles to 
Peace," pp. 134, 144. 



72 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

cargos for the relief of the starving Belgians all alike 
were sunk. If a man like Captain Fryatt attempted in 
self-defence to ram a submarine which was attacking 
him, he was condemned to death and shot as a pirate. 
The execution of Captain Fryatt was in accordance with 
Germany's new rules of submarine warfare, but it was 
against the law of aU civilized nations, for there is noth- 
ing in the law or practice of nations to prevent a mer- 
chant vessel from defending itself from attack and 
capture. Since every boat was of possible help to her 
enemies, Germany has deliberately attempted to sink 
the world's shipping, and so far succeeded, that at the 
height of her submarine warfare, she was destroying 
vessels at the rate of one-quarter of the world's shipping 
each year. 

Prussia thus places herself squarely against the civi- 
lized world. To meet her needs, she will conquer, crush, 
terrorize, and starve nations like Belgium and Poland 
and deport their population ; she will attempt to sink the 
entire shipping of the world, to carry out the cynical 
purpose of autocratic militarism. And yet the amazing 
thing about the German psychology is that she still pro- 
tests that she is fighting for ^*the freedom of the seas"! 

As the tearing up of the Belgian treaty had marked 
the beginning of the war, this tearing up of her last 
pledge and promise, her last ''scrap of paper," was the 
tenth and final reason for uniting American public 
opinion in the conviction that we were forced to fight 



PART III 

THE MENACE OF IRRESPONSIBLE 
AUTOCRACY 



PART III 

THE MENACE OF IRRESPONSIBLE 
AUTOCRACY 

Germany is like Goethe's ''Faust/' who calls in the 
Evil One for the trouble of his soul, and turns from his 
student's vocation to live the lower life of the world 
he had once despised. So the German nation, which 
had once enriched the world in philosophy and science, 
literature and art, in its religious life and social organ- 
ization, has, for the time being, apparently sold its birth- 
right for the mess of pottage of Prussian militarism. 

We cannot understand the present without the back- 
ground of the past from which it has developed. Who 
are these people that have sprung from the warring 
German tribes which fought with Caesar and conquered 
Rome? What is this dynasty, arising more than ten 
centuries ago from a feudal count, whose thundering 
armies now challenge the world ? 

More than a thousand years ago this obscure feudal 
count built his castle on the Zollern Hill in the Swabian 
Alps. From him the now famous and powerful house 
of Hohenzollern traces its descent. His descendants 
were long of small consequence in the world, but in 
1415 Frederick VI. received the investiture of the 
electorate of Brandenburg. In his person the very 
humble house of Hohenzollern became a reigning 

75 



76 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

dynasty, and early set itself the task of extending the 
narrow limits of its sway. 

By stern discipline, by industrious labor and military 
conquest, by alternate diplomacy and force, by a strange 
combination of moral earnestness and duplicity, the 
rulers of the Mark of Brandenburg made the Kingdom 
of Prussia and strengthened it, until they have forged 
a tool wherewith to challenge the dominion of the world. 
Ten centuries ago a Hohenzollern count ruled a barren 
hill in Swabia ; three centuries ago Prussia had a popu- 
lation of scarce a million and only the significance of a 
minor Balkan state ; today Prussia controls the political, 
economic, and military power of modern Germany, and 
has well-nigh disrupted the world. 

Five men have been the real makers of Prussia: 
*'The Great Elector" (1640^1688) prepared the ground 
for the Prussian state; Frederick William I (1713- 
1740) laid the foundations of Prussian militarism; Fred- 
erick the Great (1740-1786) began the edifice of modern 
Prussia; Bismarck (1862-1890), the real ruler of his 
day, was the creator of the German Empire; Kaiser 

WiUiam 11. (1888 ) sought to make Prussianized 

Germany the dominant world power. 

The Great Elector came to the throne in 1640. A 
thorough autocrat and militarist, a man of great native 
ability, he raised the first Hohenzollern army of 3,000 
men, which he later increased to the most efficient army 
in Europe, in spite of the protests of his subjects. 

Frederick William I (1713-1740) was the great 
organizer and disciplinarian, who laid the foundations 
for Prussia. Uneducated, lacking the finer qualities, 



IRRESPONSIBLE AUTOCRACY 77 

boorish and coarse, he was yet a man of such native 
ability, terrific energy, determined industry, and system- 
atic order that he fashioned a strong army and state. 
A born autocrat, he became his own field-marshal, 
minister of finance and of every other department of 
government, and controller of Church and State. He 
prohibited all newspapers in Berlin and crushed out all 
manifestations of independence or self-government. 
Rising at three or four o'clock in the morning and toil- 
ing until late at night, this giant of energy drilled and 
disciplined what came to be the best army in the world. 
He increased his forces from 38,000 to 83,000 men, and 
his Giant Guards were the pride of his heart. He trained 
the Prussian bureaucracy and made it the ablest and 
most efficient in Europe. He despised philosophy, 
science, and art, scorned higher education, and made 
the Prussia of his day a land of boors and soldiers. Yet 
he was the first to introduce compulsory primary edu- 
cation, and partly through his influence the Germans 
are today one of the best educated people in Europe. 

Frederick the Great (1740-1786) inherited the 
splendid army system and government of his military 
father. Like his two predecessors, he was a believer 
in unlimited absolutism. He conceived autocratic power 
as a trust, and crushed all opposition, forging Prussia 
into a fighting force, until its whole civil life was mili- 
tarized to fulfil his ambitions. The most gifted, ver- 
satile, and brilliant of all Prussian monarchs, he was at 
once strategist, diplomatist, economist, financier, admin- 
istrator, and organizer. He rose at four in the morn- 
ing, summer and winter, and within a quarter of an 



78 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

hoiir was at his desk hard at work. Acting as his own 
diplomat and general, by combining strategy and force, 
he lifted Prussia into the front rank of European 
powers. A great financier, he had a *'war chest" ready 
in advance to finance a four years' campaign. Like 
his ancestors, he, too, crushed out all efforts at self-gov- 
ernment and independence, and for centuries placed 
the stamp of autocracy upon Prussia. 

Having forged his army, Frederick carried out rapid 
campaigns, striking swiftly before the unsuspecting 
nations around him were well aware of his designs. 
Without the least excuse he first invaded Silesia, an 
Austrian province, proclaiming to the inhabitants that 
he had come as the real protector of Austria and in its 
interest. He alone was ready and mobilized, the other 
nations of Europe were unprepared. He said: *'He is 
a fool, and that nation is a fool, who having the power 
to strike his enemy unawares does not strike and strike 
his deadliest." And this doctrine he faithfully carried 
out. He embroiled Europe in wars which lasted for 
a quarter of a century. He also began the partition of 
Poland. 

He feared Austria's growing power, and again at- 
tacked her by invading Saxony, on the ground that 
circumstances compelled him to enter the country that 
way, saying that *' nothing but the absolute necessity of 
affairs" made him take this step. Seizing the archives 
of Dresden, he claimed that he had discovered a **plot" 
against him and proclaimed to the world that the war 
had been forced upon him as an innocent victim. In 
his ** History of My Times" he says that treaties may 



IRRESPONSIBLE AUTOCRACY 79 

be broken when necessity compels one, and that a 
sovereign must be guided by the interest of the state. 
By conquest Frederick again nearly doubled Prussia's 
territory and population. Prussia became the profes- 
sional militaristic state, the others were unprepared 
amateurs. His methods, his success, and his writings 
largely shaped the policies of Bismarck, William II, 
and modem Germany. 

Bismarck (1871-1890) ^ the Creator of the Prussian- 
ized German Empire, When Bismarck became Prussian 
minister in 1862, Germany was a mere geographical ex- 
pression. Prussia itself was weak and divided, with a 
feeble population of only some 18,000,000 people. Bis- 
marck deliberately aimed at a great and united Germany, 
organized on the ideals of Frederick the Great, but 
utilizing the scientific discoveries of the twentieth cen- 
tury. 

By three aggressive wars, so carefully planned that 
they seemed inevitable and defensive, by conquest and 
organization, he forged the modem German state. He 
consistently carried out his policy frankly announced to 
the Prussian Diet: **The unity of Germany will never 
be realized by speeches and votes, but by blood and 
iron.'' 

In 1864 he made war on Denmark, taking Schleswig- 
Holstein and Kiel and placing Germany upon the sea, 
ready for world enterprise. In 1866 he defeated Austria 
and made Prussia the dominant power in Germany. In 
1870-71 he drew France into the Franco-Prussian war, 
crushed her power, added the rich provinces of Alsace- 
Lorraine to the German Empire — ^thus quadmpling her 



80 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

production of iron ore — and took an indemnity of a 
billion dollars in cash. In the great hall at Versailles 
he had the King of Prussia crowned as German 
Emperor. Carrying out his stern policies against the 
will of the people, ruling for long periods without a 
parliament, unsupported by popular sentiment, collect- 
ing his taxes by force, Bismarck largely destroyed the 
remnant of democracy in Germany and built up a power- 
ful, united and patriotic empire. The Germans emerged 
from the Franco-Prussian war a unified people, burning 
with a new-found patriotism for the fatherland and the 
conquering Kaiser, but their costly success was founded 
on three victorious wars. It was the triumph of auto- 
cratic militarism, which had now become part of the 
nation's life. 

Kaiser William II {1888 y. The Dream of World 

Dominion, and the World War. Kaiser William II 
came to the throne on June 15, 1888. He is one of the 
most brilliant and versatile of Prussia's famous rulers 
and has carried forward the military traditions and 
aspirations of the great Hohenzollern family. 

Bismarck had made Germany supreme in continental 
Europe. The young Kaiser now turned his eyes iabroad 
to dominions overseas and a wider world empire. [With- 
in two years he dismissed the more conservative Bis- 
marck, and taking sole command, he launched into the 
deep of his world ambition. 

There was a different note in the Kaiser's speeches 
after 1895, and by 1900 the new naval policy was an- 
nounced and the race for armaments on land and sea 
was in full swing. The Kdser believed himself to be 



IRRESPONSIBLE AUTOCRACY 81 

king *'by the grace of God/' and the traditions of the 
Caesars of the Holy Roman Empire and their ambitious 
dreams were now revived. 

As we glance over the historical background for many; 
centuries during the rise of Prussia, it seems to be the 
logical development of a tradition of military autocracy. 
According to this theory, the State is power. It exists 
not for its citizens, but the citizens for it. The State 
is supreme, and acknowledges no law above itself. Might 
makes right and war must determine a nation's destiny. 
The King governs by divine right and the people by 
divine obligation should obey him. The survival of the 
Prussian medieval conception of the rule of the State 
rises in direct conflict with the rule of law in modern 
democracy. 

In the foregoing pages we have stated ten reasons why 
America was forced to fight. These are not independent 
or isolated causes, but the hydra-headed manifestation 
of a single power and principle. They are all gathered 
up in the menace of irresponsible autocracy. As we 
view these things, in the last analysis we find that there 
are two conflicting principles, two theories of govern- 
ment, two conceptions of life, which are contending for 
the mastery in the world today; and between these 
two principles there can be no compromise. 

It has been officially and repeatedly stated that our 
conflict here is not with the German people. We do not 
for a moment claim that all evil resides in them and 
all virtue in ourselves; or that we are all right and 
that they are all wrong. We do not maintain the spot- 
less innocence of the Allied nations; we do not deny 



82 THE EIGHT TO FIGHT 

the atrocities in Eastern Germany, or tlie reprisals 
which have been committed by the Allied armies. We 
do not attempt to deny or to excuse the faults, the 
wrongs, the sins, the seams of weakness in our own 
national life or in the Allied nations, but we do claim 
that there is a clear-cut fundamental issue before the 
world today. There is an ineradicable distinction be- 
tween right and wrong, between darkness and light. 
We believe that the world is now confronted by the 
deadly menace of Prussian militarism. This stands for 
a certain theory of life; it is based upon fundamental 
principles, and it carries these out with scientific preci- 
sion to the disturbance of the world's peace. 

What is this theory of Prussian militarism? As we 
have seen, it represents the State as power, as organized 
might, which stands in complete independence of, and 
in competition with, all other states. It would conquer 
by ruthless force, on land and sea, all nations that with- 
stand its claim and sway. The world's shipping, the 
^vorld's welfare, the world's peace must be swept aside 
or crushed if competing nations resist its autocratic rule. 
It holds sway over every citizen's life and conscience. 
Its claim is absolute and rests upon *^divine right." 

Against this theory of the State stands another con- 
ception. It holds that the nation is but one member 
of the great body of the unity of nations, making up the 
brotherhood of man, under the sole dominance of the 
loving Fatherhood of God. As individual members of 
our nation and of the world brotherhood, each must serve 
in friendly cooperation for the good of all and the wel- 
fare of the jvorld, ;which must be made safe for 



IRRESPONSIBLE AUTOCRACY 83 

democracy. Under this conception governments derive 
their just powers from the consent of the governed.^ 

Here are two forces in conflict. Each man, each 
nation, must choose between them. Let us clearly face 
these two conflicting theories of life ; let them stand over 
against one another in visible contrast, without any blur- 
ring, blotting, or overlapping: 

TWO CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE 

An absolute autocracj^ :wliich. A brotherhood of men cooper- 
claims the world. ating to make the world safe 

for democracy. 

Autocracy claims that the peo- Democracy maintains that gov- 
ple exist for the government. ernments exist for the people. 

Autocracy holds that might Democracy maintains that right 
makes right; that conquer- makes might; the moral or- 

ors rule. der is supreme. 

Autocracy is based on the law- Democracy is based on the cu- 
less supremacy of the na- premacy of law. 

tionalistic state. 



9 As President Wilson said on July 4, 191S, "What we seek is 
the reign of law based Mpon the consent of the governed and sus- 
tained by the organized opinion of mankind.'* 

'"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are cre- 
ated equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are 
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent 
of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes 
destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or 
to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foun- 
dation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, 
as to them shall seem most like to effect their safety and happi- 
ness." (From the Declaration of Independence.) 



84 



THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 



Militarism is based upon a ma- 
terialistic interpretation of 
the universe. 



Lasting peace is based on right- 
eousness, upon a spiritual 
interpretation of the uni- 
verse. 



Existence is controlled by the 
single law of the struggle for 
life. 



Life's fulfilment is in the high- 
er law of the struggle for the 
life of others. 



Life means the survival of the 
fittest. 



Love seeks to make men fit to 
survive. 



Selfishness is the law of life; 
the nation exists for itself. 



Service is the law of life; the 
individual and the nation ex- 
ist for the glory of God and 
the welfare of man. 



Wrong may be condoned 
cessity knows no law." 



Right is absolute; wrong can 
have no necessity. 



The sway of Mammon is su- 
preme. 



The goal of humanity is the 
Kingdom of God. 



War is the chief glory of a na- 
tion, and Europe is drenched 
in blood on the red battle- 
fields of militarism. 



The Cross stands red in sacri- 
fice of a divine life laid down 
in the saving and serving of 
men. 



At the door of Prussian militarism we lay the guilt of 
this *' wrong" that they are committing. "We lay before 
them the six million dead, kiUed in this bloody war, 
the dead of the victimized German people as well as 
our own. We lay before them the four million whoj 
have perished in the famine and disease, the violation 
and murder in the devastated nations, amid the smoking 
ruins which Prussian militarism has left in its train. 
We lay before them the &yq million prisoners of ^war, 



IRRESPONSIBLE AUTOCRACT 85. 

with all their weakened and broken men, the diseased 
and the insane. We lay before them the nearly twenty 
millions who have been wounded and who have suffered. 
on hospital beds of pain in the weary course of this war. 
We point to an impoverished world, which has been 
spending $130,000,000 a day, or more than $100,000 a 
minute, as the cost of Prussian militarism's drain upon 
humanity. 

We would that the wail of violated Belgium, the cries 
of perishing Poland, the last pleadings of the million 
Armenians, who have been tortured, murdered, or done 
to death, might reach their ears. jWe would place be- 
fore them the long line of smoking cities and the end- 
less chain of their atrocities on land, with the women 
and children and strong men on the hundreds of help- 
less ships that have been sunk at sea. We would omit 
even the mention of the violation of our own rights 
and property, but we would place before them the 
wreckage of a world's commerce, the destruction of a 
world's peace, and the hell of a world war. 

These are the things that have united the conscience 
of the world, in one burning unit of indignation, against 
the loathed menace of Prussian militarism. As we stand 
faced by the challenge of this issue, America utters with 
one voice the words of President Wilson, *'For us there 
is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the 
man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way 
in this day of high resolution, when every principle we 
hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the 
salvation of the nations." 

The die is cast and the war is on. Let it be clearly 



86 THE RIGHT TO FIGHT 

recognized that there can be no slurring of issues now. 
There can be no compromise between darkness and light, 
between wrong and right, between defeat and victory. 
There is no such thing as moral neutrality, no such thing 
as a Prussian peace. There is really no possibility of a 
draw or a compromise in the present struggle. 

Let us suppose that we stop now and try to make 
peace. What is the situation? Prussian autocracy 
holds today almost all that she set out to gain in the 
present war. She holds Belgium, one of the richest in- 
dustrial centers of the world; she holds the heart of 
France with her best mining and manufacturing areas. 
She holds the industries of Poland, the granary and oil 
fields of Roumania, the best manufacturing districts of 
Russia and the approach to her capital. She dominates 
the Balkan corridor to the Near East and the access 
to Egypt and India. She holds naval bases opposite the 
coast of England, where she can strike at the heart of 
Britain within six hours in the darkness of a single 
night. She holds the solid Central Empires and the 
crushed unity of 176,000,000 people. She holds stand- 
ing ground for the next and last war, where she may 
make the complete conquest of the world 's liberty. 

Let there be no evasion of this issue. As Ambassador 
.Gerard says: ** Unless Germany is beaten, the whole 
jvorld will be compelled to turn itself into an armed 
camp, until the Germany autocracy either brings every 
nation under its dominion, or is forever wiped out as 
a form of government." ^° In closing we would repeat 



10 Mr. Gerard continues: "Why must the people in old Poland 
die of hunger, not jfinding dogs enough to eat in the streets of 



IKKESPONSIBLE AUTOCRACY 87 

the words of the British Premier: ^' There is no half- 
way house between victory and defeat.' ' 

Lemberg? The long lines of broken peasants in Serbia and in 
Roumanian the population of Belgium and Northern France torn 
from their homes to work as slaves for the Germans; the poor 
prisoners of war starving in their huts or working in factories 
and mines; the cries of the old and the children, wounded by 
bombs from Zeppelins; the wails of the mothers for their sons; 
the very rustling of the air as the souls of the ten million dead 
sweep to another world — why must all these horrors come upon a 
fair green earth, where we believed that love and help and friend- 
ship, genius and science and commerce, religion and civilization, 
once ruled? It is because in the dark, cold Northern plains of 
Germany there exists an autocracy, deceiving a great people, poi- 
soning their minds from one generation to another and preaching 
the virtue and necessity of war ; and until that autocracy is either 
wiped out or made powerless, there can be no peace on earth." — 
"My Four Years in Germany," pp. X, 431, 432. 



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